Bringing Sake to London
Inside, amongst the stainless steel vats and the palettes of bottles waiting to be filled, Tom and Lucy enthusiastically take us through their brewing process. From the starter mixture (bubbling away noisily in a corner), to the process of ‘drip pressing’ the rice by hanging it up in large cotton sacks and allowing gravity to – ever so slowly – do its work, the process can take up to 12 weeks from start to finish. With the aim of bringing sake to a much wider audience, the pair are often up at all hours of the night, making sure that timings and temperatures are exactly right for the long, slow ferment they have chosen in order to produce a fine, dry sake suited to the British palette.
As labour intensive as it can be (both Tom and Lucy have day jobs in the city, and spend long evenings and weekends in the brewery), the benefits of this small-batch system are clear – more traditional methods such as the ‘drip pressing’ of the rice produce a much cleaner, higher quality sake, and allow Kanpai to contend with industry giants, who usually reserve these time consuming methods for their very best competition-grade sake.