Kan Sake 燗酒 is one of the unique way of enjoying beverage in Japanese Culture. With the warm temperature, you can feel mild alcohol in your mouth and also a crispy flavor from rice.

 Even in Japan, people sometimes confuse with Atsukan 熱燗 and Kan Sake 燗酒. Atsukan is a name of the temperature and Kan Sake is a general term to enjoy Sake at the temperature above the room temperature. Please refer to Serving Knowledge for the precise temperatures.

It is not only to warm your body, but also to find the other face from Sake, so people often enjoy even in Japanese hot summer season.

This time ikki deliver how to enjoy Kan Sake.

How to warm Sake

 To make a good Kansake, what you need to understand first is that it is to warm NOT make it hot. If you make it hot too much, the alcohol vapor in the air and it will lose the characteristics of the Sake. When warm Sake, increase the temperature gently to not damage the Sake.

To make the sake warm there are generally 3 ways to enjoy at home; which are  with hot water, electrical heater and microwave.

Please see the detail as below;

Hot water

 Traditional and basic way of warming Sake is with hot water. In the traditional Izakaya居酒屋 (Japanese Style restaurant or pub), they mostly use this method to warm Sake. Even at home, there are the ceramics as shown in the photo above, which you can use to enjoy Kansake at home. you pour the hot water in the outer ceramics and put the small ceramics into the hot water, so that the Sake in the smaller ceramics get warmer by the hot water around.

Electrical heat

 This electrical heating machine is the latest version of Kansake at home. You simple pour the water in the ceramics on top and the unit below has the metaric heating parts which gets hotter as you pu the electric switch on.

What makes this machine convenient is you can control the temperature, so that you can enjoy different temperatures with small effort. 

Microwave

 The last method is using microwave. This is simply pour the sake into the glass and make it warm. What difficult with microwaves is that it is difficult to control the temperature. If you mistakenly boil the Sake it ruins the characteristics.

Is microwave bad for Kan Sake?

 In terms of quality, it is difficult to use as mentioned above. Those 3 methods above is all different, but cannot say which is the best, you need to try and find your best method for you. 

 ikki cannot say bad or good for microwave, but the microwave are the easiest way to make Sake. 

 please enjoy Kansake at home, and find your best solution.

See you in the next article.