What is Nigori Sake Limited for Winter?

The liquid of sake is normally transparent and has no color. In the brewery season, the white colored limited sake is going to appear, which is called “nigori” sake.
Nigori means “muddy” in English. Literally, the liquid of nigori sake is colored muddy white. Today I will introduce the difference of nigori sake and the normal ones.

How to produce

As we explain the production process in this page, the MOROMI is passed through a press to separate out the sake lees in the very last step of brewing. The large-meshed bag is used to produce nigori sake in this step. By using large meshed bag, sake contains some amount of unfiltered rice solids.
Breweries sometimes control the amount of rice solids less to create the nigori sake. This kind of slightly white sake is called “Usunigori” or “Origarami”.

The feature of Nigori sake 

Since nigori sake contains the unfiltered rice solids, the taste tends to be sweeter than clear sake, the aroma is stronger, the texture is more smooth and creamy. Moreover, since the unfiltered rice solids contains a lot of yeast and pasteurization is normally skipped, Nigori sake tends to be a little sparking.

How to appreciate

Since the rice solids settle at the bottom of the bottle, it is important to shake it to blend the clear sake and white muddy sediment. Closer attention needs to be paid to keep the quality of nigori sake. Unpasteurization and unfiltered rice solids make its taste easy to change, so that nigori sake must be kept in a refrigerator.
To bring the nigori sake’s best feature out, we recommend to pair with spicy foods. The creamy and sweet taste make spiciness of food mild.
Besides, because of nigori sake’s unique texture and taste, it is sometimes used for cocktails. Please take a look at some samples of nigori sake cocktails.
We SAKEMARU will offer nigori sake on this May!!