Mukune Internship - Day 1

Day 1 started off strongly. Hardly surprising that everyone was up and ready for the “optional” 7:30AM meeting with the Toji (master brewer). We made a quick tour of the brewery, visiting the shubo (yeast starter) room to start things off, followed by some quick work with the moromi (main mash), and the koji (mold rice).


The moromi bubbling away.


Cleaning the edges after stirring the mash. I took a turn at this and my eyeballs were burning from the CO2. This is one of the more dangerous activities in the kura, as you can see it is a precarious position to be in and little recourse (and no oxygen) if one falls in.


The koji rice, ready for use. Lightly fuzzy looking, lightly sweet tasting.


Daimon-san’s “Ferrari”, as he likes to call it. He believes that judicious use of technology has made sake quality better than ever. This machine is for controlling the temperature and humidity curves for the koji


Samples of moromi being prepared for analysis.


Air hoses for the Yubata press, which is used for, well, pressing of the sake.


Tools.


Cleaning the rice steaming bags, my first task of the day.


Bags of milled rice, precisely weighed and ready for the pre-steaming prep. My second task of the day was basically to load rice into the washer.


Rice washing machine - this is for the quick removal of rice dust before soaking, both of which are timed precisely, to the second.


Cleaning the lees from the pressing machine.


After lunch, it was time for more packaging work. Here, we’re preparing inserts for the shippers. This is a small brewery, with small production volumes, so some of these processes must be done by hand.


Such as putting labels on the bottles. My responsibility was to do quality control on the labels and crate the bottles.


Success!


Rice being milled. This is at the 55% level.


At 5PM sharp, quitting time. A welcoming party was planned, so we made a quick run to the combini for some beer. This one comes with an ominous message.


A tremendous spread! We had some great jumanai djimi-django – as the Vaynerchuk seems to say, but even better, lots and lots of nama.


With Saketechan and Daimon-san – not our host, but one of our teachers for the week.

And on to Day 2!

Go to Mukune Internship - Day 2