[birds chirping] [alarm clock blaring] [alarm fades] man: as soon as i start my sake production, i have to be here every single day. that part i wasn't quite ready for.

sake-making is a lot about the tradition, making a product that isso traditionally tied to the culture of japan. it's one of the oldest crafts on the planet. woman: i often think of proud craftsmen in japan in all fields. when it came to sake-making, my husband jake and i want to have the same pride of what we do with the sake we make.

woman: i didn't even like sake that much, to be honest, until i had my very first unpasteurized sake, which is namazake. and unpasteurized sake has a lot more kind of natural, earthy flavors, and just my first experience, realized, "wow, sake could be so flavor-rich." man: most sake that comes in the u.s. has been heat-pasteurized twice, once in the tank and then again in the bottle, and that's to make it shelf-stable so it can go all over the planet and not have to worry about keeping it cold. unpasteurized namazake you have to keep cold because it's live. we have not killed any of the yeast, any of the enzymes, so they're constantly channg, 'cause it should be treated like fresh food.

it is really fresh and bright. noriko: both my husband and i, we lived in japan from 2001 to 2011 and came back to san francisco, and i was really surprised to see this japanese food culture was booming and there are a lot more premium sakes available at retail stores. however, they still didn't have our most favorite sake, which is namazake, so we decided, ok, if we can't get it, then why don't we make it? that's how we started home-brewing sake in our garage.

beau timken: sake was this huge mystery. how can rice and water taste like honeydew melon? how? the sake market in the states has been around sort of since the seventies. the wine people didn't really fully accept sake in the beginning. they always thought of it as sort of this novelty. people didn't get it. sake represented one thing: it was an extension of sushi. nobody ever thought about sake without thinking about sushi first. everybody had the same thought: all sake tasted like this. they had no idea sake tasted like this, and there are very light and flavored sakes and there's very nuanced sakes and there's fruity sakes and there's--and so people started realizing, "oh, my gosh, there are so many different types of sakes." [steam hissing]

noriko: we wanted to make more local sake using local ingredients, so thought we'll try it with local california rice first. dr. thomas tai: originally, rice came to america via the east coast in the early 1600s and then in california around the 1850s. this was during the gold rush, and the railroads and rice was brought in by immigrant

workers, mainly from china. there was a lot of rice imported to feed these workers. there was interest in trying to develop it as a local crop. later on, it was determined that rice could grow quite well a little bit further north, and a scientist from the usda actually was the first one to grow a rice crop successfully in california in about 1908. shortly thereafter, farmers became interested, and rice production started about 1911 and now it's become really part of the lifeblood of this region. [distant bird squawkin jake: our rice is locally sourced in california. for me, that was a key aspect, to be able to have control of our rice from the paddy all the way

through to the bottle. california has a long history of rice cultivation. very fortunate to me. i can call up to rice growers in sacramento, which is only two hours from re, and i can order my rice. erin o'donnell: we've been growincalrose in california for so long, and we've really perfected it to grow wh really high yields, but also be a really high-quality grain. calrose originated from a sake rice variety, watari bune, which is really well-renowned. farmers will take our beautiful, clean, cool water that we get from the snow melt of the sierra nevada mountains, they'll bring it onto the field, and it's only about 5 inches of water. when you look at a rice field, it seems like there's so much water on there, but it's really only about 5 inches.

erin: similar to japan, california has a really wet, cold winter and a really hot, dry summer. in the summertime, it's really hot in the day, but it cools off at night, and this gives the plant a time to rest. so by resting, it's able to really mature into a nice, beautiful japonica variety. once this water is on the field, then they'll drop the seed by airplane.

erin: as the rice ant emers from the water, it'll grow out and mature all through the summer, in the nice, hot summer. we'll begin to harvest the rice and then mill it down to sake rice. we really want to get to that sweet, starchy center in the middle of the rice, shimpaku center, and that white center is where all these sugars live. for sake rice, what you need to do is continue to mill it down so you get right down into that shimpaku center and take away as many proteins as you can. as a junmai sake would be a 70% sake, so then you're milling 30% of the outer layer of the rice

kernel off, or a daiginjo sake would be a 50% milled sake, so then you're milling 50% of the rice kernel off. so you could imagine that takes a lot of rice to make a daiginjo sake. jake: and it gives it a cleaner flavor and it's probably more fruity, more fragrant, and that is just some of the best sake and the most expensive sake you can buy. beau: with sequoia sake, these guys who are using sort of a whole craft movement of saying, "wow, let's make something here" and as a retailer, i was like, ♪ hallelujah ♪ because sake coming from japan is relatively expensive. i think the market is really open and ready to something called craft sake or microbrewery sake because there's such a huge craft movement now. [steam hissing]

noriko: i was born and raised in kyoto, japan. i had a lot of fun just like a normal kid, but i was always somewhat frustrated because kyoto was very conservative, traditional community, and also my parents were very conservative and old-fashioned. and this japanese saying that a woman should obey her parents when young, and obey her husband when married, and obeys her children when old. and both my community and my parents thought i should be just like that. i kind of knew i didn't belong in there, and i was always looking for a way out. first year in college, i took a summer course in hawaii. i felt at home from the beginning because i expected american

people accepting differences. i felt so at ease. this is where i wanted to be, and it was real. jake: i was going to buffalo state university and i got a scholarship to go to japan, and that's where noriko was also going to the same school. i was coming into the headmaster's offi while she was walking out of the headmaster's office, and i stepped on her foot. unbeknownst to m it was just released from a cast, and i felt so bad, i had to apologize and take her out to dinner, and that's how it got started. we met in our early 20s, and it took me another 5 years to convince her to marry me. is it done? noriko: i don't know. what do you think? is it done? jake: yeah, it's done. i want the crispy part. i want the crispy one, ok? noriko: oh, ok, well... jake: ah! thank you. yeah. ha ha!

[speaks japanese] noriko: kampai. jake: kampai. noriko: mmm. so you're going to start rice first thing in the morning, right? jake: i'm going to start rice tomorrow morning. noriko: yeah. so i can just show up, like, 9:00? jake: show up at 9:00, it'll be ready. tomorrow at 8:45. my grandmother, we always ate canned vegetables that we canned urselves. l the jams we made ourselves, so i really had an appreciation of, you know, tezukuri or, you know, handmade foods. it was, le, part of our life. we always did our own pickling. my mother did thatso it was, like, a real natural part of my life. noriko: and i was a very curious child. i always wanted to experience and see something new, something different. when it comes to food, i was dying to try all these, like, modern-style food, western food. but my parents and my brother, they just wanted to eat kind of same old thing. the only way

for me to experience those, you know, fancy food, you know, the new, exotic foo that was to cook it myself. so i bought several cookbooks and learned how to cook. when it came to sake-making, too, it just occurred naturally to me that ok, then why don't we just make it? 'cause that's what i've done all my life. beau, i want you to try this new batch of genshu. i thought i'd bring it to you and ask your feedback, ok? should i pour all 3? ok, this one? beau: yeah, please. yeah. great. so i taste out of 3 vessels usually because when i write my reviews, i don't ever know what people are going to drink at home with. so i'm going to jump right in. noriko: mm-hmm. [beau smacks his lips]

beau: wow. i can aeady tell there's a--a... a real nice smoothness... noriko: ah. beau: a very nice body to it. noriko: mm-hmm. [beau smacks his lips] noriko: that's a good sign. beau: hmm. tastes a little drier this year. what is the, uh... [vois fade] beau: the next evolution, the next expression of sake, were people who were making sake in the states. since sakes, like, a handheld beverage, and since it's a storied category of alcohol-- you have to tell a story--what better story than this is a locally made sake by these people? this is us. this is our people, our water, our rice, our materials, everything. it's us. this is the flavor of us. noriko: mm-hmm. beau: really has a nice balance to it. noriko: mm-hmm. beau: so i get impact, then i

get a very clean sip, sort of velvety flavor. it's nice. it's a richness, but it doesn't drink heavy rich. it's great. noriko: oh! beau: it's fantastic. noriko: thank you! beau: yeah! noriko: yeah, so a few things we did differently with this batch. ok, we... [voice fades] beau: so when i pour now, i have that--i have the story, and those guys, the craft makers, are the real storytellers rightow. jake: so when we got started, i asked a lot of japanese contemporaries in japan who were already making sake, i said, "hey, i'm going to make sake in california. what do you think?" and their first comment was, "well, california only has table rice." dr. tai: sake can be produced from what's considered "tle rice," but for the premium types of sake, there are specific attributes that are of interest. those include having what's called a white cre. this is

called "chimpaku" in the japanese language. because the market is table rice, milled whe rice, the attributes that they are lookinfor actually are translucent kernels, one that don't have this white core, whereas people who are interested in sake-brewing varieties would like to retain that feature. my interest in working with sequoia sake is that they're really tryingo emulate what's being done in japan with the premium sake varieties. they were interested in some ancestral california varieties. that is in my area of expertise in terms of rice genetics. we began a conversation about the development of some of these ancestral varieties. jake: the heirloom rice is a pretty big gamble for us. it's a lot of time and a lot of expense. my friends in the sake

business in japan, they have a wide variety of rice they can choose, and they blend that different rice to create a new product, and you get all these flavor profiles out of it. i am really limited, so it's really, really important for me to get this rice right. if this heirloom rice doesn't come out to produce the best product, i'll probably go back to the drawing board to find another rice or another solution to bring another variety of rice to the table. we grew it last year for the first year inside a greenhouse. this year, we got approval to actually grow it outside, so hopefully i'll grow enough of it that i can then grow it into a real plot next year and have it so i can use it in sake production. noriko: ok, so this is the one that just came out of barrel. and then this one, i just set alcohol back to 17.8.

jake: it's--yeah, this has a significantly better mouth feel than the adjusted one, so... the aroma is incredible, also. noriko: i want to make sure we retain the craftsmanship in this brewery. touch something, feel something, smell something, use my 5 senses. most of the time, the making sake is hard work, but very, very enjoyable. most of friends thought we were crazy, you know, like, "really? you serious?" and when it comes to my family--[chuckles]they actually still don't know i'm making sake. ha ha!

they think i still work for this, you know, big company. 'cause my parents are so conservative, they think it--the most important thing in life is to have a stable job. so if they find out i left and now started making sake, they'll totally freak out. and they are getting old, so i don't--i don't want to shock them. woman: all right. noriko: i don't know when i come out to them. jake: close, close, close. woman: closed. jake: little wet for luck. that's light! that's really light! that's really light. [noriko speaks indistinctly]

jake: ok! ah. all right. woman: hose open. jake: i am incredibly satisfied when i taste the product and it tastes what i was expecting, or i taste some of the rice that i know came from our farmer. i mean, it's so gratifying to know that all that hard work-- that i didn't make any mistakes along the way, and they actlly came together. beau: my hat is off to sake makers because they're a different breed of cat. they've embraced the repetitive motion of creating something, but that's their strgth. so wh you're doing something in an environment, and you're doing it over and over and over, that repetition is methodic in one

sense and it's cathartic in another. it is a way of life. noriko: so we all put a lot of effort into sake-making. it's hard work. so, when we finally bottle sake or, you know, before bottling, tasting the sake we make, we're not 100% confident that this is the best sake we could've made. or, you know, even worried: "will people like this sake?" jake: i mean, the art of creating sake, you know, making sometng live and then having it go out there and people having my sake with their

dinner is just amazing. i'm making a real, live product. this is a passion, this is a lifestyle i chose. noriko: sometimes i'm really happy with the quality or the outcome. some other time, not as much, and so then we think about, ok, what we did definitely with this batch and how we should change the next batch, so already thinking about the next batch. it's just part of the process, not the end. erin: i think, for sake to become a part of american cuisine, all it's going to take is for people to try it. it's wonderful, especially these fresh, local namazakes. i really see the movement of craft brewers and the local movement to really drive this. as sake becomes elevated, and

consumers are looking for higr-quality sake and different varieties, we are growing with that industry. [overlapping chatter] beau: these are the people who have dedicated their life to a very difficult lifestyle, and it's admirable, especially today. you can get machines to make sake for you, and you can go on vacation. they don't do that. they make it by hand and it's awesome. jake: spend the time to enjoy what you're doing, and it's the process that really is important. i think i bring that to the sake-making. that's what i love about the sake-making. it's f the moment of making it. beau: with sequoia sake, they're doing it as well as their mentors, what have you, in japan.

i'm confident that what's in the bottles they produce tells the story of sake. sequoia sake is making sake right here in the dogpatch in san francisco. this is really being able to capture the making, the local production of sake. that gives it its flavor, that gives it its style, that gives it its unique characteristics. noriko: i am just happy if i can just keep doing what i enjoy now as long as i can keep working. i really cannot think of where we should be or where we want to be. you remember all the happy memories and all the hard work and say, "ok, now, you know,

it's something that we grow into, send out to the world," and feel all this hard work and struggles, everything was worthwhile. ?c?g?góe/ñ/ñ/ñ/ñ/ñ/ñc (upbeat music)

real l(beep) rht her it don get a more westoast thathis. (cama lens stter) what'sp, roy?