Sake

Alcoholic beverage of Japanese origin

Sake, saké (Japanese: 酒, Hepburn: sake; English: IPA: SAH-kee, SAK-ay), or saki, also referred to as Japanese rice wine (specified as 日本酒 "nihonshu" in Japanese, as 酒 can refer to all alcohol), is an alcoholic beverage of Japanese origin made by fermenting rice that has been polished to remove the bran. Despite the name Japanese rice wine, sake, and indeed any East Asian rice wine (such as huangjiu and cheongju), is produced by a brewing process more akin to that of beer, where starch is converted into sugars that ferment into alcohol, whereas in wine, alcohol is produced by fermenting sugar that is naturally present in fruit, typically grapes, in a process known as multiple parallel fermentation. Although similar, the brewing process for sake differs from the process for beer, in which the conversion from starch to sugar and then from sugar to alcohol occurs in two distinct steps.

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