The Drunken Botanist: The Plants that Create the World's Great Drinks (15 page)

At the same time, a separate batch of rice, koji, water, and yeast are blended together to kick-start fermentation. The koji only turns the starch to sugar; now yeast have to eat the sugar and turn it into alcohol. Once the yeast start multiplying, the two batches are combined over three or four days, with more steamed rice, water, and koji meeting the yeast each day. At that point the two processes are happening simultaneously in the same vat: the koji mold is breaking the starch into sugar, and the yeast is eating the sugar as it is released. This complex brew of microbes has to be managed very carefully and stopped at the precise moment the sake is finished. Because each ingredient is added gradually, the yeast don't die off as quickly as they do in, say, wine or beer fermentation. They continue to live in the mash and excrete alcohol until the alcohol content reaches about 20 percent.

Once the brewer is satisfied, the entire yeasty, moldy mash is pressed to separate the sake from the solids. Then it is filtered and pasteurized with heat to stop the fermentation. Some enzymes
survive and continue to work on the brew, so the flavor improves as it matures in tanks for a few more months. While most sakes are sold clear and full strength, some are diluted to make the alcohol content closer to that of wine, and some are only coarsely filtered so that the resulting beverage is cloudy from the remnants of yeast, koji, and bits of undigested rice. A high-quality sake will taste clean, crisp, and bright, with aromas of pears and tropical fruit or, in some cases, an earthier, almost nutty aroma.

Those distinctive sake flavors are even more concentrated in
shochu,
a distilled drink that starts with a sakelike mash. It's bottled at only about 25 percent alcohol, and loopholes in some United States liquor laws allow it to be served in restaurants with only a beer and wine license. This has led to
shochu
's use as a mixer in Asian-inspired cocktails—think lemongrass martinis—but it's actually best on its own, over ice.
Shochu
is also made from barley, sweet potatoes, buckwheat, and other ingredients, but the rice-based version is the most common. And “common” is an understatement: the best-known
soju
brand (the Korean version of
shochu
), Jinro, outsells every other spirit brand in the world, with the possible exception of some Chinese brands that don't disclose their sales. More Jinro
soju
is sold each year than Smirnoff vodka, Bacardi rum, and Johnnie Walker whiskey combined—608 million liters in all.

Drinks similar to
shochu
and sake can be found throughout Asia. In addition to Korean
soju,
a Chinese rice wine similar to sake is called
mijiu.
In the Philippines, rice wine is
tapuy
and in India it is
sonti.
In Bali they make
brem,
in Korea a sweet version is called
gamju,
and in Tibet it is
raksi.

Fermented rice cakes are also added to water to make home brews throughout Asia. One of the most interesting uses of rice cakes was described by French anthropologist Igor de Garine, who did field work in the Malaysian state of Terengganu in the 1970s. As deeply devout Muslims, the villagers he lived with never touched alcohol. But they did have a tradition of making steamed rice cakes called
tapai.
The cakes were cooked in combination with local yeast, wrapped in the leaf of a rubber tree, and left out in the heat for a few days. They fermented so well that when he tasted one,
he thought that “someone had slipped a little gin into it.” He never mentioned the familiar flavor to his hosts, who managed to get some enjoyment from the cakes without realizing—or acknowledging—that they contained alcohol.

Rice is not limited to sake,
shochu,
and fermented rice cake. Kirin and many other Japanese beers are made with rice, as is Budweiser and a few other American beers. Premium rice-distilled vodkas have come onto the market in the last few years. At the other end of the spectrum, a Laotian rice whiskey called
lao-lao
is touted as the cheapest spirit in the world, at only about a dollar a bottle—and that bottle includes a perfectly preserved snake, scorpion, or lizard, a gimmick that puts the worm in mezcal to shame.

RYE

Secale cereale

poaceae (grass family)

R
ye was an unlikely candidate for domestication. The grains are rock hard and not particularly tasty to livestock. Yields are low. It is guilty of “precocious germination,” which means that the seeds can sprout while they're still on the stalk. At worst, that spoils the grain, and at best, it makes it impossible for brewers and bakers to work with, because once the conversion of starch to sugar gets under way, the carefully controlled process of getting bread to rise or turning grains to alcohol is thrown off course.

Rye also happens to be low in gluten and high in a carbohydrate called pentosan. As compared to wheat, the proteins in rye are very water soluble, which means that they turn into a slimy liquid or a rubbery solid when wet. This makes dough less elastic and can turn a brewer's mash into a sticky, awful mess. Most rye dough has to be mixed with wheat flour to make it easier to work with; distillers limit the amount of rye in their brews for the same reason.

Pliny the Elder was not fond of rye. In his
Natural History,
written around 77 AD, he wrote that it was “a very inferior grain, and is only employed to avert positive famine.” He said that it was black and bitter and had to be mixed with spelt to make it palatable but was still “disagreeable to the stomach.”

This may explain why rye was one of the last cereal crops to be domesticated. It's only been cultivated since 500 BC, and even then it only became popular in Russia and eastern and northern European climates, where its cold-hardiness made it a grain of last resort. The seeds can germinate when soil temperatures hover just above freezing, allowing it to be planted in late fall, and it will survive long, harsh winters and produce a crop in spring, before any other grain. It crowds out weeds and thrives in poor soil where little else will grow.

It's no wonder, then, that European settlers brought rye with them to the American colonies. Wheat proved difficult to grow in New England's short growing season, but rye could make it through the inhospitable winters. Early American whiskies were made from whatever grains were available—usually a blend of rye, corn, and wheat.

George Washington is America's most famous early distiller of rye whiskey. Like many of the nation's founders, he made his living as a farmer. In 1797, less than a year after the conclusion of his second term as president, he built a distillery at the urging of his farm manager, a Scot named James Anderson. Anderson pointed out that Washington owned the entire supply chain: he grew and harvested the grains on his own land, ground them into flour or meal at his own gristmill, and could easily transport his products to market. Converting those grains to whiskey would be the most profitable way to sell them, and Anderson had the experience to make it happen.

Washington's whiskey was a blend of available grains; a typical recipe was 60 percent rye, 35 percent corn, and 5 percent barley. It was not bottled or labeled but sold by the barrel as “common whiskey”
to be dispensed to customers at taverns in nearby Alexandria. The venture was wildly successful: when he died in 1799, it was one of the largest distilleries in the country, producing over ten thousand gallons of alcohol in a single year.

After Washington's death, the distillery fell into disrepair and burned down in 1814. Fortunately, the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States took an interest in the historical site. Working with archeologists and the Mount Vernon estate, they financed the reconstruction of the distillery. It sits next to the gristmill and now operates as a working distillery, producing rye whiskey using the same equipment and methods James Anderson would have used. There's just one difference: the whiskey sold at Mount Vernon today isn't sold as unaged “common whiskey.” It's aged in oak barrels to make it more palatable, then bottled and sold in limited quantities each year.

Rye whiskey
: To earn the label “rye whiskey” in the united states, the spirit must consist of at least 51 percent rye, be distilled to no more than 80 percent alcohol, and be aged in charred new oak containers at an alcohol level of no more than 62.5 percent. If it has been aged for at least two years, it can be called “
straight rye whiskey
.”