Distillation is the part of the process that tends to get the most attention, probably because it involves a still and lots of heat, and because its where the product comes out - its kind of sexy. The reality is that by the time liquid actually goes into the still at Tano, the interesting decisions have mostly already been made - well, mostly.
Our process is vastly different to the tradtional mash making of whiskey or redistilaltion and infusion of flavours for gin. The journey starts when we select our Saccharification agent, the workhorse that will break down our grains or jaggery for fermentation: koji, or nuruk? Are we making shochu or Soju? If its soju, we break up and sun dry the nuruk. If its shochu, we begin to plan our koji making.
For soju, our nuruk is the absolute heart of it - bad nuruk makes for bad soju, so we've spent a lot of time in R&D to get to where our nuruk tastes and performs well - you can read all about our nuruk here.
For shochu and our koji, we will sort and wash the rice (oh so many times), and we then steam it in our custom steamer — each step matters because each one sets up what comes next. Over soaked or poorly steamed rice makes poor Koji. Poor Koji makes for a fermentation that never quite gets going, or doesnt break down enough of the starch, leading to off flavours. Our stills can't fix a problem that started three steps earlier, which is why every stage gets the same attention as the one after it.
After steaming, the grain goes into our custom built Koji room - the "Kojimuro". It then gets inoculated with mould spores, and for 40-50 hours it is watched, turned, cooled down and watched all over again - because it gets hot as it grows, and if it gets too hot, it dies - and dead koji aint any kind of good koji. When it's ready — and tbh there isn't any single way to know when it;s ready, you just develop a feel for it over time — we move it into the fermenters, combine with water and yeast, ferment that for several days, and then add a primary starch or sugar (ie barley or jaggery) - and this is where the actual full conversion of starch to alcohol happens. That ferment runs for anywhere from a week to several weeks depending on what we're making. Its the same for soju and nuruk.
Then, and only then, does it go into the still.
There are two popular ways to distill shochu and soju. Pot distillation is the traditional approach - a single pass that preserves everything the fermentation developed. The end product is full-flavoured, textured, and rustically experienced. Then you have vacuum distillation, which works at lower temperatures, which matters when you're working with base ingredients that have volatile aromatics you don't want to cook off.
Here at Tano, we are all about atmospheric distillation, not just because it is a more "traditional" approach, but because we are huge fans of deep, complex flavours that single pot distillation gives when working in a regular atmospheric vibe. Our shochu is always one run and done, but our soju can be a combination of single distilled, double distilled, or plate distilled with only 2 plates. It depends on the soju, and what we are after, and often we will split a batch into two and run one in one way, the other in another - just because we love to see how versatile it is and how different flavours can be shaped in the actual distillation process.
After distillation, for shochu especially, is another crucial step - filtration. This isn't the harsh carbon filtration you may be thinking of, but a more gentle paper filtration that really makes the spirit shine. You see, because we go so deep into the "tails" when making shochu, this carries over a lot of fatty oils that, if left in the spirit, will generally go bad and make it taste like ... yep. So we chill the spirit as soon as it comes off the still, and remove as much of that as possible without losing flavour - and as it ages, oil some will accumulate on the surface of the spirit, and we usually take Glad Wrap and gently wipe it off. What this means, is because we don't use malts, our tails end up not smelling or tasting of "wet dog" like other spirits, but genuinely become a flavoursome, crucial part of the spirit, which also helps to round out the "heads" - the two merge and cancel each other out, its like some weird sorcery.
After all that, we age it. Some shochu and soju can be aged for mere months before its ready, but most are ready after 6 months to a year. Some we leave for a little bit of extra time. Awamori, for example, after 3 years, becomes a thing called "kusu", where a dramatic change occurs and it starts to take on vanillin. We mostly age in stainless steel for the moment - ceramic to age traditionally are very hard to come by (but are hopefully on the way!).
We also put some into our 19L Bad Motivator barrels, where we can experiment with a wide range of woods for limited releases, or, where people can actually purchase one through our barrel ownership program - which we think is pretty unique.
