Sake Terms
The following are a bunch of basic terms that have to do with sake.
nihonshu - This the Japanese word for sake
koji-kin - This is a type of mold used to break down the starches in the rice so it could eventually be converted to alcohol by the yeast.
futsushu - Ordinary sake or "table sake"
junmai - Pure rice sake. The ingredients in this type of sake are only rice, water, koji, and yeast. The rice in this sake has no polishing requirement.
honjozo - Sake that has been produced with a small amount of brewers alcohol. The rice has been polished to at least 70%.
ginjo - Sake that has been made with rice that has polished to at least 60%. It maybe made with out without brewers alcohol.
daiginjo - Sake that has been made with rice that has polished to at least 50%. It maybe made with out without brewers alcohol. The labor for this type of sake is done without machines and is very demanding.
tokubetsu - This is a word for special in Japanese. It usually indicates that there was a "special" method used when producing the sake.
namazake - This is a type of sake that was not pasteurized.
nigorizake - This is a coarsely filtered filtered sake. The coarse filtering allows some of pieces of rice to remain in the sake. It usually looks cloudy.
koshu - This is sake that been aged.
jizake - This is local sake.
shiboritate - This refers to sake that been freshly pressed.
seimaibuai - This is the Japanese term for rice polishing. When we talk about the polishing rice in sake you usually see a percentage. If you see it has been polished 65%, that means there is 65% of the piece of grain remaining. It mean the outer 35% was removed. The reason it gets removed is to make it easier to get to the starches contained in each rice grain.
nihonshu-do - This is a number given to sake. It is an indicates how sweet or how dry a sake is. It is positive and negative numbers. The lower the number the sweeter the sake tastes and the higher the number the dryer the sake tastes.
SMV - This another term for nihonshu-do. It stands for Sake Meter Value.
sanmi - This is the Japanese term for the acidity of the sake.
toji - This is the Japanese term for the brew master.
kurabito - The Japanese term for the brewery employees making the sake