Saionji Shonagon
New Member
One dreamed of becoming somebody. Another remained awake and became. (Found in a fortune cookie.)
Posts: 7,240
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Sake
Jan 22, 2007 22:12:44 GMT -5
Post by Saionji Shonagon on Jan 22, 2007 22:12:44 GMT -5
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Sake
Feb 10, 2007 19:17:35 GMT -5
Post by Yoshimitsu on Feb 10, 2007 19:17:35 GMT -5
Honorable dianet, I Googled "sake brewing" and discovered a fair number of sites. The first was a link to a variety of sake URLs: www.goodgulf.com/sake.htmlYoshi
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Sake
Apr 10, 2007 13:18:54 GMT -5
Post by Saiaiko on Apr 10, 2007 13:18:54 GMT -5
Okay... when it was all said and done, I didn't do too badly (won the novice brewing, got a green ribbon, and actually ranked second in overall points in brewing). Here is my entry into the Ice Dragon A & S competition and the judges comments. Please feel free to use my text and any of the resources. It was a tremendous learning experience and I am in the process of making more. I must give a great and many thanks to my sensei, THL Solveig Throndardottir, and to my knight, Sir Ogami Akira, for their help with research and materials. www.redgeta.com/Food/Sake/shirokawa_amazake.html
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Sake
Apr 10, 2007 18:31:56 GMT -5
Post by Date Saburou Yukiie on Apr 10, 2007 18:31:56 GMT -5
Congradulations on your Sake experiment, Saiaiko-dono. Did you get young virgins to masticate the rice?
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Sake
Apr 13, 2007 18:15:08 GMT -5
Post by Saiaiko on Apr 13, 2007 18:15:08 GMT -5
They weren't as hard to find as I thought. I just hit the computer science lab at UB.
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Sake
Feb 4, 2008 16:18:24 GMT -5
Post by Saiaiko on Feb 4, 2008 16:18:24 GMT -5
I am looking for kusagi, or Harlequin glorybower, in a dried or powdered form for kuroki. I can find the plant as an ornamental, but nothing in the way of being offered at asian apothecaries. If anyone has any information about this, please respond here. Thanks!
Latin - Clerodendron trichotomum, Siphonanthus trichotomum English - Harlequin Glorybower, Peanut-butter Shrub Chinese - Chou Wu Tong Japanese - Kusagi Korean - Nu-ri-jang-na-mu
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Sake
Feb 4, 2008 22:10:37 GMT -5
Post by solveig on Feb 4, 2008 22:10:37 GMT -5
Hi.
What you should do is contact a Department of Agriculture Field Office (there is one at SUNY Potsdam), an extension station, or an ag school. (Cornell comes to mind.) You might even consult the botanists at SUNY Buffalo.
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Sake
Feb 4, 2008 22:15:01 GMT -5
Post by solveig on Feb 4, 2008 22:15:01 GMT -5
Saiaiko hime!
Greetings from Solveig! You may be interested in the following:
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Sake
Feb 4, 2008 22:21:51 GMT -5
Post by solveig on Feb 4, 2008 22:21:51 GMT -5
Saiaiko hime!
Looking a bit more into Clerodendron trichotomum, I believe that what you really want to get are dried flowers from the shrub.
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Sake
Feb 5, 2008 11:06:48 GMT -5
Post by Saiaiko on Feb 5, 2008 11:06:48 GMT -5
Thank you, sensei.
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Sake
Feb 6, 2008 1:04:57 GMT -5
Post by solveig on Feb 6, 2008 1:04:57 GMT -5
Saiaiko hime!
You might also consider getting the dried fruit of the shrub. I suspect that this is an even better choice. The shrub flowers rather late in the year and the fruit is actually flower shaped. Given when kurogi is used in a matsuri, I suspect that it is either the flowers or the fruit that would be used. It might be useful to find out exactly when the shrub flowers and bears fruit, and pick whichever is better associated with the date of the annual festival in question.
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Sake
Feb 6, 2008 21:24:52 GMT -5
Post by Noriko on Feb 6, 2008 21:24:52 GMT -5
Just out of curiousity, how did you make sure you had made drinking alcohol/sake and not something...else. I've heard some tales of home brewing experiments gone horribly wrong but those might be urban legends.
On a completely different tangent, has anyone ever had sparkling sake? I've found it to be pretty yummy, since the bubbly texture adds a sweetness that hides most of the alcohol-y ness [1]. Since I had no one to share with, I had half a small bottle of flat sake after a few days. Might not be drinkable but it turns out that it worked extremely well in many recipes that called for cooking sherry or mirin[2]- adds a very subtle zing...)
[1]I dislike things with an alcohol taste, YMMV. [2]I had bought mirin here but it tasted... off. Not like the stuff I used to use back home...
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Sake
Feb 7, 2008 0:35:34 GMT -5
Post by Water_Tengu on Feb 7, 2008 0:35:34 GMT -5
Just out of curiousity, how did you make sure you had made drinking alcohol/sake and not something...else. I've heard some tales of home brewing experiments gone horribly wrong but those might be urban legends. On a completely different tangent, has anyone ever had sparkling sake? I've found it to be pretty yummy, since the bubbly texture adds a sweetness that hides most of the alcohol-y ness [1]. Since I had no one to share with, I had half a small bottle of flat sake after a few days. Might not be drinkable but it turns out that it worked extremely well in many recipes that called for cooking sherry or mirin[2]- adds a very subtle zing...) [1]I dislike things with an alcohol taste, YMMV. [2]I had bought mirin here but it tasted... off. Not like the stuff I used to use back home... hmm, would you go through the same process of making sparkling wine to make it?
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Saionji Shonagon
New Member
One dreamed of becoming somebody. Another remained awake and became. (Found in a fortune cookie.)
Posts: 7,240
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Sake
Feb 7, 2008 9:22:22 GMT -5
Post by Saionji Shonagon on Feb 7, 2008 9:22:22 GMT -5
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Sake
Feb 7, 2008 10:28:25 GMT -5
Post by Saiaiko on Feb 7, 2008 10:28:25 GMT -5
Just out of curiousity, how did you make sure you had made drinking alcohol/sake and not something...else. I've heard some tales of home brewing experiments gone horribly wrong but those might be urban legends. Heh, good question. Well, I start out by making sure everything I use is super-clean-disinfected-sterile. There's some bleach and boiling water involved. After that, it's a matter of letting nature take its course. The right "bugs" that make the alcohol take hold pretty quickly and keep the bad ones out. The rule of thumb for me is if it smells good, it is good. In the initial fermenting of the rice, before the water is added, the mixture has a yummy rice-y bread smell. There are no weird colors or grayness. Your nose knows what's bad; its had tens of thousands of years practice in making sure you you don't eat things that will kill you. That said, things do go wrong sometimes, but it's usually pretty obvious with sake. A lot of those horror stories are probably holdovers from the days of moonshine, when disreputable distillers would add all manner of inedible substances to stretch their grain.
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