Todd Bellomy was physically trapped in an office job at Boston Beer Company but his mind and heart were in Japan. Bellomy had spent several years living and working in Japan where he developed a love for sake and homebrewing. “I was stuck in a cubicle job at Sam Adams and was just dying to brew anything,” he recalls. “I was making sake at home in my kitchen.”
Then he got a call from his friend Will Meyers, the brewmaster at nearby Cambridge Brewing Company, who suggested they make a sake-beer hybrid together. Using housemade sake and fermented with a mixture of barley and rice wort, the resulting beverage, called Banryu Ichi, was first released in 2012. The pair have made new versions of the beer a few times in the decade since its first release.
The experience gave Bellomy the inspiration and confidence to leave the beer industry and to enter the world of sake production. “Without that initial kind of inspiration from, I don’t know if I would have jumped to commercial sake production,” Bellomy says.
Bellomy acknowledges that sake has been slow to develop outside of Japan. “Sake brewing is in its infancy,” he says. “The last time I checked, there are fewer than 50 breweries outside Japan.” Bellomy opened Farthest Star Sake in 2022 outside of Boston, and it remains the only sake brewer in New England. Bellomy offers some advice to brewers looking to learn more about sake and how it can be integrated into beer brewing operations.
Sake 101
“Sake is the best beverage that nobody knows they want to drink,” Bellomy says. “A lot of people think they know what sake is from the warm sake they serve you at some sort of hibachi or sushi restaurant. That is literally the cheapest sake you can possibly buy.” He notes that quality sake is clean and complex while remaining easily drinkable. Sake production involves polishing rice, washing and steaming it, then adding a mold called koji to break down starches into sugars. Yeast ferments the sugars into alcohol, creating a mash. After fermentation, the mash is pressed, filtered, pasteurized, and aged before being bottled. “From a beer vernacular, I’m basically malting and fermenting in the same tank at the same time, and it’s that balance that really makes good sake,” Bellomy says.
First Steps For Brewing With Sake Yeast
“Sake yeast certainly does not consume the same profile of sugar as beer yeast, so you get some very different flavors,” Bellomy notes. “Also sake yeast is a cold, loving yeast. For example, the beer we made in conjunction with Cambridge Brewing was like six weeks of fermentation. It doesn’t have to be that long, but it was a high alcohol beer. So if you were just brewing like a five or six-percent alcohol beer, you’re looking at least two to two and a half weeks of fermentation at colder temperatures.”
Bellomy notes the yeast companies often don’t provide a thorough explanation of how to use sake yeast in beer, especially as to accurate fermentation temperatures. “In my brewery, we don’t go above [53 to 59 degrees Fahrenheit]. So it’s pretty cold compared to beer. You might lager at temperatures like that, but we’re talking primary fermentation at those temperatures. So if a beer brewer gives the yeast the chance and the environment, the cold environment, and just gives it a chance to really do its thing, you’ll get tons of fruit flavors and aromas and a ton of complexity. That’s where I would start.”
He recommends contacting your yeast purveyor to access sake yeast. Bellomy suggests White Labs Sake #9 Yeast. “It’s not in their regular rotation, so you have to custom order it,” he suggests. “But sake number nine is a super strong fermenter. Also, it’s just really fruity, with a lot of watermelon, kind of Jolly Rancher, flavor. It’s just super fruity and approachable and easy to work with. So that’s a good starting point for a lot of brewers.”
Next Steps For Sake Beers
After securing sake yeast, Bellomy recommends brewers add some rice to the batch, which will bridge the two beverages while maintaining beer qualities. “If you have a sake brewer in your area, like me, then you could approach them about a collaboration. In that case, there’s a wide variety of techniques. We could actually convert the rice into sugar, first using koji, and then transport that to the brewery and dump it in the mash tun. And use sake yeast on top. These can add more sake character.”
Bellomy notes brewers are also starting to experiment with koji on their own and he has some advice. In addition to using it to break down starches, koji has “amazing flavor as well,” he says. “Unfortunately, at mash temperatures, koji dies. So if you throw koji in the mash tun, you get the flavor of the koji and some sugar from the actual rice it’s grown on but you don’t get any saccharification because the koji dies at whatever temperature it mashes at. But you could use koji and mix it with rice and water at a lower temp, give it a couple of days to convert, and then dump that in your mash. “You would get an additional sugar contribution for fermentation after you’ve broken down the rice and some koji character, which has a really sweet chestnut character.”
In terms of base styles, Bellomy says the options are endless. “One of the things you have to remember is sake beers are not regulated by the government, so you could literally call anything sake beer,” he says. “A lot of sake styles tend to be a little on the sweeter side compared to beer and so I picture a maibock with sake yeast could be really awesome. I’d love to see a black lager with Sake #9 yeast. I think that would be really cool, because it would give it this really fruity complex dimension to it. There’s a bunch of beers I think would work really well. Obviously, the low hanging fruit is a rice lager. It’s a pleasant style but I definitely think any beers that have complex fruitiness, like a black lager, Baltic Porter, or a maibock would be really great with sake yeast.”