And maybe the climate?
It seems like a big ask for a small drink, sake has such a small percentage of the global drinks market that no-one even really tracks it. Just its annual worth estimated to be $9.2 billion in 2023 – compared to an overall alcoholic beverage value of $1639.9, 0.56%
It really is a small proportion of all the alcoholic drinks consumed in the world. But as the motto of the tiny UK county of Rutland says: Multum in Parvo, or “much in little” for those of us that don’t speak Latin.
Sake is unusual in all the brewed cereal drinks in that it doesn’t use any malted grains. The whole malting process of steeping the grains in water, then drying them out, then roasting them is absent in making sake. All that water and energy isn’t part of the process.
Instead the rice is polished to remove the outer layers of the grain, getting rid of the fats, proteins and other impurities that would negatively affect the clean sake flavours. The polishing process does use energy though, but for beer the level of polishing wouldn’t need to be anywhere near as high as that for the pure sakes. And the amount of energy used for polishing rice is a lot less than that for malting barley, and the amount of water used is negligible.
Growing rice, however, takes triple the energy used to grow barley according to a 2010 Australian study and where it really falls down is the amount of water needed, up to eighteen times the amount used for barley. That water can be cleaned and reused though, so it’s not all lost to a single crop.
So how does sake manage to get away without the malting process? Simply put: Fungi.
Sake brewing makes use of Koji, rice that has been inoculated with Aspergillus oryzae, a fungal based enzyme that breaks down the starches and proteins and creates the sugars. This is the same process that the Alpha and Beta Amylase enzymes on the malted barley achieve in the brewery mash tun.
It’s a much slower process though, and runs a much higher risk of contamination and infection than using malted barley, which is why sake brewers employ a process known as Multiple Parallel Fermentation. This is something that scares a lot of brewers away from making sake, it sounds very technical and foreign, yet any brewer who has dabbled in ageing beers in wood casks will have touched on it. Simply put, it’s doing the mash at the same time as the fermentation. The enzyme continuously convert the starches to sugars to feed the active yeast. It’s the method used to keep barrels of IPA fresh on their voyage to India, and casks of ale fresh in pub cellars. A process that the brewing industry almost lost – except for sake brewers who have made it a central part of making their drinks.
Beer brewers switching to this method remove the mash tun and the copper completely from their process. Their fermenters become both mash tun and fermenter, but it does mean that because the alcohol is being produced from the start, there can be no boil – and no boil addition hops. Unless you wanted to boil off all the alcohol. But modern brewing is using less and less copper addition hops, relying almost solely on dry hopping. So the removal of the copper is less of an issue.
Can replacing malted barley with koji and multiple parallel fermentation produce a recognisable beer though? In theory, yes. During the Industrial Revolution maltings were improved to the point they could produce a pale malt, one without the smoky aromas that came from the use of the grain husks or wood as fuel. And the new, more accurate temperature controls meant that darker malts were able to be made with those flavours in abundance. Brewers could now stop using almost 100% roasted Brown malts and use 90% to 95% Pale malts with the remainder made up from Brown or Black malts. And this was much cheaper as malting the pale malts was far, far cheaper.
Which gives us the precedent for using a koji and rice base for a postmodern beer, with the malty and roasted flavours coming from adjunct malt additions. 80% koji rice, 15% oats to boost the body, and 5% roasted barley could – in theory – still make a stout that we’d recognise as such. Yet the amount of malting needed would be minimal, just for the 5% of roasted barley. There’d be no mash tun and its hot water involved, or the hot sparging, and no copper and the energy needed to boil a large amount of liquid. And then the energy and water used to cool it down afterwards.
Can sake save the brewing industry? Its ingredients and process can certainly reduce the amount of energy and water needed to produce a beer, and that reduction in energy and water usage can only be good for the environment. So perhaps this idea of a postmodern beer, modern craft learning and incorporating traditions from a tradition started around 2,500 years ago can indeed become Multum in Parvo, so much in so little.