Kioke Jikomi (木桶仕込)

Brewing sake in wooden barrel

Wooden barrel (or wooden tank) is the most traditional container. In the past years, wooden barrels used for fermentation, maturation, and storage. The surface of wooden barrel is rough and hard to clean, that easy to contamination at brewing stage. Japanese sake brewery start switch from wooden barrel to stainless barrel. Using wooden barrel for sake brewing is very rare today.

Wooden barrel is hard to clean that you have to take more time and labor than stainless barrel to avoid fermentation failure. Even using wooden barrel for sake brewing is an inefficient way, it could make the sake flavor with full of personality. Although it is rather difficult to predict the final flavor of sake brewing by wooden barrel, there many Toji want to try.

Now only few Toji can control sake brewing in wooden barrel, and only brave Toji use wooden barrel brewing personality sake. If you have the chance of meeting the “Kioke Jikomi” sake, please won’t miss it.