Brewing Sake in Wooden Barrel
Wooden barrel (or wooden tank) is the most traditional container used in the past years for fermentation, maturation, and storage. Nowadays, sake breweries have switched from wooden barrels to stainless barrels. The surface of a wooden barrel is rough, making it difficult to clean and easily contaminated at the brewing stage. Even though using wooden barrels for sake brewing is an inefficient way, it could create a sake flavor with full of personality that is difficult to predict. Therefore, many Toji want to try it.
However, wooden barrels are difficult to clean and require more time and labor than stainless barrels to avoid fermentation failure. Nowadays, only a few Toji can control sake brewing in wooden barrels, and only brave Toji use wooden barrels to brew personality sake.
If you have the chance of tasting the "Kioke Jikomi" sake brewed in wooden barrels, don't miss it.
