WE HOPE YOU’LL BE IMPRESSED…
Get it!? Since that’s a picture of our new press. Like, imPRESSed. Yikes, yeah, I had the opportunity not to make that joke and then I decided to include it. It’s just so gorgeous! See how excited we are, I’m not the only one:
Here’s a note from Shinobu to elaborate upon our excitement and thank everyone involved with bringing this beauty into our brewery:
Our new Fune (press) just arrived! This is one of the most essential pieces of equipment for a sake brewery, as it allows us to efficiently separate out the sake from the kasu (leftover rice solids). Without this device we would have to squeeze cloth bags by hand or resolve ourselves to only selling alcoholic porridge! Our old mini fune served us very well for our small-scale operation on Central, but this new fune will allow us to make more sake!
As you may imagine, specialized equipment like this can be hard to find in the US. We would not have had this beautiful masterpiece without a help from our partners Agile Stainless and Iida Trading Company. This is the fruit of a 16-month engineering collaboration (a.k.a late night Zoom calls) between Jon and Aram at Agile Stainless and Hamamoto-san at Iida Trading. And special thanks to Kono-san for the overall coordination. It will be well used!
-Shinobu
HappY PRIDE TO ALL!
We had such a great time getting to host Ducky & Patsy at the brewery a few weeks ago, and we’re really looking forward to having more events with them in the future. So much love and community support, and this year we are happy to have donated $5 per every Pride bottle to @glits_inc. You can check out the G.L.I.T.S website here!
A note from Caleb aka Ducky Sheaboi:
Pride 2023 is coming to a close and what a season it’s been! It was such a cool experience writing the Pride bottle’s description. The bottle is a wonderful example of how the brewery is utilizing sake to build community. Having the chance to engage with taproom customers while in drag was truly a highlight! Thank you to everyone who came out and purchased a bottle. It’s beyond encouraging to see folks gathering to show their support for the queers! I know we’ll keep this vibe going 365. Hope everyone had a safe and engaged Pride. Stay tuned for more drag at KSW!
-Ducky Sheaboi
RICE MILLS
If you follow our social media, you’ve already seen some recaps from my trip to the West Coast, but I just wanted to nerd out about the rice mills we visited for a moment. Did you know how massive the machinery is, just to insure that every grain is delicately polished with the highest quality? The factory looks like this:
I couldn’t take pictures inside to show you the equipment, but here’s a photo of the sake rice mill at Eigashima Shuzo of Hyogo to give you an idea of what it looked like:
And here is a great article explaining the process if you’re curious to learn about how it works. And I’ll leave you with a picture of Kono-san of Iida Training Company, Jake of Sequoia Sake Brewery and me (hi!) outside the factory with our awesome tour-guide!
PS- Here’s a rice joke fore ya:
How does rice say goodbye?…. I hope to see you a-grain soon!
- Evan’s internet search