Heed the siren call of our latest Cache Collection beer – Sake Tsunami. This extremely unique, experimental lager/sake hybrid was brewed with polished jasmine rice and sake koji spores to jump-start the fermentation, which was then finished with lager yeast. This gives the beer notes of sweet rice, hints of cantaloupe fruitiness and nuances of shiitake earthiness. 

National Geographic puts the earliest used of a rice-based alcohol in 300 BCE, with the “modern” version we’re familiar with appearing almost 400 years later. Evidence of beer – a grain-based alcohol – has been seen as early as agricultural days, especially in the Mesopotamian region. The Code of Hammurabi, which was a carved list of legal codes in Babylon from nearly 4,000 years ago, even includes a daily beer ration! 
The melding of these two cultures in one beverage has created a glass rich in the history of fermentation around the world. To raise a glass of Sake Tsunami is to toast the brewers who have come before us, and celebrate the ways they’ve crafted civilization. 
Read on for a further explanation on sake and beer brewing! 

While lagers are brewed with the four ingredients of water, yeast, malt, and hops, sake is brewed with water, yeast, rice, and koji. Both undergo fermentation, but in different ways, allowing for the combination of the two into this smooth, limited release beverage. For fermentation to occur in beer, barley needs to undergo a malting process where the barley is soaked and begins germinating. The germination is then stopped, and the malt moves on to be mashed, where the starches are broken down into sugars. The grain in sake is rice, which does not undergo a malting process. Instead, the rice is “polished,” which removes the outer layers and exposes the inner starches that will convert to sugar. This is where the koji is used. It’s a mold spore (don’t be grossed out, blue cheese also uses mold and it’s considered a delicacy) that is sprinkled over the polished rice and breaks the starches down into sugar. After these processes occur in both the lager and the sake, yeast is then used in each to break down the sugars and produce alcohol.  

For our Sake Tsunami, our brewer Raphael uses polished jasmine rice with koji spores to begin fermentation, and then adds in lager yeast to complete the process. It’s the lager yeast, rather than the yeast that would normally be used to complete sake, that brings a complex and robust flavor to our smooth brew. This beer sits at 10% alcohol and 25 IBUs. Have a taste, and let us know what you think!