This is an idea Iāve been kicking around for a while. Iāve had a few smoked beers over the last year and even a āsmokeyā sake from Proper recently, so I thought Iād give it a go on my own.
The idea originally started as a project for the Colorado Sake Social Club. I thought we might smoke some koji and see what happened, but I couldnāt figure out a good way to do it without damaging the koji spores.
I then started chatting with a baker friend and a bbq friend to see if they had any good ideas on how to make it work. Then I started to see that folks on the internet smoke rice to eat all the time. So I started messing around with their recipes a bit, called up my bbq friend and gave it a go.
Iām very sure this will need a lot of tweaking going forward, but for the first batch hereās how I started it.
I smoked 570g of uncooked, unwashed Calrose 60% at 250F for about an hour and fifteen minutes. It did color the rice a bit and there is some smoke odor, but it is lighter than I would have expected.
I also smoked 1061g of the same rice at the same time and temp, but I washed it first and did not completely dry it before smoking. There was some discoloration, but not much smoke smell to the batch. Iām hoping the wet grains sucked a bit of the smoke inside.
Iām thinking next time, and possibly the rice I have left for the final addition, might work if I wash and soak the rice, then use the smoker for a cold smoke steam cook. It might impart more smoke to the mix. Iām hesitant to do this initially as I donāt want to overpower the rest of the flavors with just smoke.
To this mix Iām planning on using some wild yeast from The Black Project brewery. Iām not sure what this will do exactly but the description is as follows:
This culture is a rare mix of microbes sourced from the Denver breweryās coolship and wild yeast living on Colorado-grown Riesling grape skins used for beer production.
Flavor/Aroma Profile: Clean saison initial; Funky, sour with aging; varies batch-to-batch
So this may end up being a totally undrinkable sake, but it will be something interesting for sure.