Sake – alcoholic beverage of Japanese

Sake is a Japanese word meaning ‘alcoholic beverage’, which in English has come to refer to a specific alcoholic beverage brewed mainly from rice.

Sake is a rice wine, clear and pale yellow in color and brewed to an alcohol content that may vary between 14 and 20%.

The enzymes that breakdown the starch molecules into fermentable sugars in sake making must come from outside the rice grains, which already have been milled or remove the outer portions and therefore cannot be malted.

The enzymes provided by Aspergillus oryzae will perform the required saccharification.

It has higher alcohol content than the traditional wines. This is because sake brewing combines the two steps of converting the rice to sugar and the sugar to alcohol simultaneously.

The beverage gives ample evidence of its alcohol content with no astringency, little acidity and slight sweetness. Among other benefits of drinking sake is to prevent ill health, cleans poison from the body and extends the life span. Japanese believe that ‘Sake is the king of 100 medicines’.

Today, the quality of sake is at the highest it has ever been and sake has become a world beverage with a few breweries springing up in China, Southeast Asia, South America, North America and Australia.
Sake – alcoholic beverage of Japanese