Taiwanese sake brewery owner Chiang Wei (江偉) on June 10 received the platinum award in the junmai category at France’s 2024 Kura Master sake competition, the first time a Taiwan-made sake has won the award.
In an interview on Thursday, Chiang said his background and education had nothing to do with sake making, and he had become a brewer simply because he liked the taste of sake.
Previously, Chiang owned a motorcycle modification shop in Kaohsiung, where he remodeled part of his store into a sake bar before it became a small chain.
Photo courtesy of Chiang Wei
However, the business was hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic, forcing him to close down most of the branches and even take out loans to retain the original store, although the store had been closed during the pandemic, he said.
Chiang said that during this time he entertained the idea of making his own sake, believing that it should not be “too hard,” as Taiwan grows plenty of good rice and has sources of good water.
“It was not easy at all,” he said, adding that Taiwan’s rice was mainly for eating and was not the type used to make alcohol.
He later obtained suitable rice for sake making, a cultured sample branded Tainan No. 16, via Tainan District Agricultural Research and Extension Station staffer Chen Jung-kun (陳榮坤), Chiang said.
Yeast for making sake was hard to find after the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government moved to Taiwan in 1949, he said, adding that the difficulty was compounded as the Japanese government heavily restricted yeast exports for making alcohol.
Chiang said he had created a hybrid yeast out of two exported yeast kinds, Kumamoto No. 9 and Nagano No. 7, but then he ran into a separate problem — he had no brewing equipment.
The Wu Feng Farmers’ Association Distillery offered to help, providing the last step necessary to make sake, he said.
Chiang named the award-winning sake “Taiwan To Go No. 1” (台灣土狗一號), taking the idea from the once ubiquitous indigenous Formosan mountain dog.
The government should consider subsidizing breweries, as it would provide an alternative source to help consume excess rice, Chiang said.
Citing the Ministry of Agriculture’s 2022 statistics, he said that, on average, each person consumes 43kg of rice annually, down almost half from the 90kg recorded 40 years ago.
The ministry often holds events encouraging rice consumption, he added.
Sake brewing includes the seimaibuai process, or the removal of proteins and impurities from the rice, leaving behind mostly starch, he said, adding that the most basic standard required a 70 percent seimaibuai, meaning that the rice would only retain 70 percent of its weight.
More premium sake, such as daiginjo, required even more seimaibuai, up to 50 percent, or even 23 percent, Chiang said, adding that if 1 tonne of rice were used to make daiginjo at 50 percent seimaibuai, only 400kg would remain for the actual brewing process.
However, this 400kg of rice could produce 800 720ml bottles of premium daiginjo sake.
Chiang said he had met with plenty of refusals from both the local and central government when seeking help in transitioning to a brewery during the pandemic, which he thinks was due to the negative outlook of investing in the alcohol business.
Responsible drinking is a goal the brewery business should strive to achieve and promote, Chiang said, adding that establishing breweries is a method to create added agricultural value.
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