4th Annual Local Tastes with Friends of Clyfford Still

Very excited to be apart of this fun event at the Clifford Still Museum this summer! It has my wheels spinning and thinking about if we can get a fun sake out in time for the event. Perhaps this is a good time to introduce the Gin Barrel Sake, or bring back the Jackalope Milk Teeth, or wake Old Mose from hibernation. The list of participants isn't out yet, but should be fantastic.

Guess I'll have to head on over to the museum with my notebook soon and get to creating!

For more information on the participants and event details, head over to the museum's website.

Senate Bill SB18-079 Update

RJ Sangosti, Denver Post file

Well the wheels of government keep turning...and thankfully they're continuing to move in our favor. Colorado Senate Bill 79 has passed through the Senate and has moved onto the House.  Hopefully we'll hear some good news before the end of March.

We've had a few people ask what they can do to help us out. If you want to reach out to your local reps and let them know they should support this bill. If you want to keep an eye on its progress you can follow along here.

303 Day Pacific Rim Sake Tasting - 3-3-18

Yesterday's sake tasting event at Uncle Joe's Hong Kong Bistro was super fun. It was a sold out event with a great turnout. Even though there were over 30 sakes at the event our line never slowed all day.

It was great to hear the feedback and see how our sake paired up with the more traditional stuff from Japan. It was also a good experience to set up shop next to the new kids in town, Colorado Sake Co. and see how we stacked up against them. Our sakes are both very different, with different flavor profiles. I'm excited for how we will influence each other going forward...and what we might create together.

It is always nice to get feedback from professionals and casual drinkers alike. It makes me really excited to have a tasting room soon. We've got a lot of ideas that we'd like to persue and it is great to see that folks are open to our experimentation with sake.

303 Day 2018

303 Day (March 3 for you out-of-state folks) is becoming a pretty big deal these days. Lots of events and sales and local pride happens across the Denver metro area.

I was fortunate enough to spend a few hours chatting with William Stewart from Colorado Sake Co. today. It got me pretty excited for this year’s 303 Day in that we will have more than one local sake to celebrate with! We will both be participating in the Pacific Rim Premium Sake Tasting II event this coming Saturday (303 Day). I’m very excited to put our sakes next to some great sakes from all over Japan and in get them in front of sake lovers across the metro area...and beyond.

Slinging sake for Denverites

It is very exciting that the sake community is growing, not only locally, but nationally as well. The diversity of styles, techniques, and experimentation is fantastic.

the great folks at Colorado Sake Co.

2018 and the Infinite Possibilities

Happy New Year (both Lunar and Gregorian)! 

2018 has been a bit of a whirlwind so far. We've got quite a few events in the works

Happy Hour at Shift Workspace on February 13 - 3:30-4:30pm

Premium Sake Tasting II on March 3 - 2pm-5pm

Eat Colorado Food Show March 6 - 12-4pm

Thirsty Thursdays Speakeasy Nights - The Art of Dancing and the Love of Geisha August 16 - 6-8pm

We've also heard that there is a new game in town working on some new legislation that, if it goes through in a timely manner, will be really great for us...and hopefully for all of you. First it will allow us to have a tap room and make it easier to sell product directly to you. We've very excited!

We're also exploring some spaces for a new tap room and have our eyes on some pretty cool spaces.

2018 is shaping up to be really interesting and full of excitement. 

#sake and #cocktails

One of the nice things about having lots of friends, is that sometimes your friends challenge you to try different things.  I am not a huge fan of sake cocktails. Mostly they are either too simple (i.e. just cucumber or ginger) or way too complicated and push too much booze to punch up the cocktail and you loose the sake flavor.

Well, thank god for talented friends. Tonight a friend who lives in China, rolled through town and put together three cocktails that pushed the sake to the front in the best way.

Cherry Sake Float
2 Scoops Vanilla Ice Cream
Green Tea Cherries & Juice
1 oz Palisade Peach Sake
Top with Soda Water

Sometimes you just start with desert first. This Cherry Sake Float was a lovely way to start the process. It was a light, low alcohol  treat with a lot of flavor. 

High Country Lemonade
1 Shiso Ume
1-2 Lemon Rounds
1/3 Cup Lemon Juice
1 oz. Ginger Pear Shrub
1/4 Cup Elderflower Liqueur
1/2 Cup Queen City Sake

is roughly enough for 4 drinks. split between 4 glasses, give each one a shiso ume and a lemon round, some ice, and top with soda water. 

This tart salty treat was absolutely refreshing. It hits all the right spots and really made me miss summer.  

North Fork
1 Tablespoon Peach Jam
2 Tablespoons of Apple Juice
1-2 Drops of Cherry Bitters
Shake and pour into the bottom of a highball glass
2 oz of Palisade Peach Sake
1 oz of Ginger Ale
Fill Glass with Tiny Ice
Float 1/4 oz of Colorado Rose on top
Garnish with Brandied Cherry

This was a great way to end the tasting. It really pushed the sake to the front of the cocktail. The combo of all the ingredients paired really well with the sake and brought out all the best characteristics of the sakes. 

I'll get the recipes uploaded soon and thanks to everyone who came out tonight to offer their feedback.

GABF and new friends

The Great American Beer Festival, or GABF, is always a crazy weekend here in Denver. Brewers and beer enthusiasts from all over the world pack downtown Denver and it’s breweies with thousands of people.

We were fortunate to meet Luis Enrique De La Reguera from Cerveza Cru Cru when he was in town about a month ago. He came by the brewery to learn about our sake and taste the beers at Grandma's. Luckily there was a new person working the bar that day and Matt was out thrift store shopping, so Marc got to show him around and chat with him. He was in town working with Epic Brewing on a new collaboration beer, a gose using crickets to add an earthy flavor and color to the beer. We're pretty excited to try it.

Well we also got to talking about sake and he mentioned that he knew the folks at Nami Sake, the only sake brewery in Mexico City...and I think the only one in Mexico. Of course we were very excited to learn more about it. Oh man were we excited to walk into the brewery this week and see this bottle just sitting on our desk. 

Nami Junmai

Man it is good! If you can find it anywhere in the states or get lucky enough to have someone bring you back some, DO IT!!! You will not be disappointed. It is light, clean, and dry. It is a very refreshing drink. I am going to have to spend some time doing research on it to pull some of the more subtle flavor notes, but it is good.

So after a long process of internet searching, we finally got a hold of Luis (thank you Instagram) and got to meet up with him and his crew of brewery palls from Mexico and thank him properly for his great gift. We bounced around from Spangalang to OMF to Ratio and ended the night at Bierstadt Lagerhaus chatting about beer, sake, how to get Mexican beer better representation at GABF...all through his pretty good English and my really bad Spanish. 

I can say that I've never been more excited to visit Mexico than I am now and I look forward to finding ways of getting their brews up north.

The only pic I got all night of the Mexican brewers. That's what you get for having too much fun.

Colorado's Only Sake Company

We were lucky enough to be featured on Channel 2 Daybreak this morning. It was a lot of fun and probably the fastest 3 minutes I've talked ever. We're really excited to see where this takes us.

Uploaded by Nancy Melear on 2017-09-27.

Grand adventures and new friends

Our brewer Marc ended up taking a mystery trip to Seattle for the last few days. Luckily for him a few pieces fell right into place and he was lucky enough to spend some time with Jeff and Sachiko from Cedar River Brewing in Ballard. Jeff was nice enough to share his wares...the new batch with Yamada Nishiki is fantastic...and catch us up on some of the fun things he's been working on.  

Andy on the left and Jeff on the right tasting Cedar River's Nama

We were also fortunate enough that Andy from Tahoma Fuji Sake also stopped by for a visit. We chatted with him about some of the trials and tribulations of opening up his space and the benifits of having a competitor in town to boost both businesses. Jeff said it best, "One sake brewery is a novelty. Two breweries is a trend." 

Andy was nice enough to show us around his space and share his sake with us.

 Andy drove us over to his space and showed us around. While being a refurbished garage, it was damn impressive. His setup of tanks and production areas were no joke. It helps that his product is solid as well. Can't wait to see what happens when he gets fully up and running.

Meanwhile back in Denver...Keith and our new salesman Dale (more to come on that later) were fortunate to have John Gauntner and his wife stop by the brewery for a chat and tasting. (Pics to come later) He was in town teaching his Sake Professionals class at DU. Even though most of our wares weren't his favorite, he had some great things to say about our biz and gave us some words of wisdom for the future. We're looking forward to getting some more feedback from his class later this week, as he was nice enough to take a few bottles with him to share with his students.

We're also getting ready to add the first round of peaches to our latest ferment. If all goes to plan we'll have it bottled and ready to go by October 1...Sake Day 2017!!!  We'll keep the updates coming on that for sure.

Fall is just around the corner...where did the summer go?

It has been a bit of a rough summer around here. A lot of our restaurant friends have been hit hard lately and have seen a lot of restructuring and hard decision making, which has also affected us. We're working through some bumps and hiccups of our own as well.

But...there are also really great things on the horizon. We're experimenting with some new packaging.

This pack will allow you to take our sake many more places in Colorado. Since glassware isn't allowed in city or national parks, you'll be able to bring this with you and enjoy sake from all the scenic spots and adventurous locations.

We're also working through all the paperwork to bring the Old Mose (our black rice sake) and our Colorado Rose (new red rice sake) out to the market. We're hoping to have it available by spring. And we're bringing the Palisade Peach back! We're harvesting the peaches over labor day and the brew should be ready around Sake Day this year (October 1).

We're also excited to be bringing a new member of the team aboard this month to help us with sales. We're hoping that this will get us further into certain markets and make it easier to get our sake to you.

Congratulations are also in order to our brewer Marc on getting married in July. His crazy weekend of events wore us out to the point where we forgot to hand out sake to several guests.

Sake day is also just around the corner and we're trying to figure out an event. We'll let you know as soon as there is a plan.

Lost in Translation with The Five

We had a fantastic evening hanging out with the great chefs of The Five. Our serving station was right next to Duane Walker of Centro Mexican Kitchen who prepared an incredible Beet Cured Salmon Noodle Bowl and Sriracha Buffalo Fried Oyster Roll. Both paired nicely with our LSQ and El Colorado sakes. Our other neighbor was Elan Wenzel of Sushi Sasa who created some tasty and unusual Pot Pie Stuffed Churros and Miso Soup Mashed Potatoes. The whole menu was fantastic and really surprising.

The whole night was kind of like being on an episode of Top Chef. The creativity and talent tonight was pretty amazing. 

The response tonight was really great from the attendees and we had a lot of fun. We look forward to working with all these folks in the future.