Sake Vessels: Tokkuri

Hello, everybody. And welcome to sake podcast. I'm your host, John Puma from the Sake Notes. Also, I'm the administrator at the Internet Sake Discord, as well as Reddit's r slash sake community.

And I'm your host, Timothy Sullivan. I am a Sake Samurai. I'm a sake educator, as well as the founder of the Urban Sake website. And every week, John and I will be here tasting and chatting about all things sake and doing our best to make it fun and easy to understand.

All things sake. I love it. On this show, we're going through our search for all things sake. We have a lot of series that we like to do. We go and we, we talk about different rices. We focus on different prefectures and we have a series where we talk about different sake serving vessels. You have tuned into one of those episodes where we're going to talk about another sake serving vessel, Timothy. What do we have

Yeah. Well, it's interesting. our sake vessels series has been focused Up until now on drinking vessels, meaning the actual cups that we use, and we've had Sakazuki, we've had Ochoko, we've had Guinomi, and today we're going to take a little bit of a different tack. We're going to be looking at a service vessel. So this is a vessel for pouring sake, and this is something that Everybody has probably seen out in Japanese restaurants out and about town.

mhm,

Now, John, you know what a tokkuri is, don't you?

I do. And, uh, I like that you said, like, it's something that everybody's probably seen in the Japanese restaurant before, because I definitely knew what a Tokkuri was a long time before I ever heard the word Tokkuri.

Yes.

And I think that's probably the case for a lot of people who, uh, who are getting interested in sake and have seen these before, uh, uh, many, many times, I'm sure, uh, in various restaurants. how would you describe, what, what, what's, what is the textbook definition of the Tokkuri?

Right. Well, the tokkuri I often describe it as a carafe for pouring sake

Mmhmm.

and it, it is almost a symbol of the sake industry. A lot of people who have sake businesses use a tokkuri in their logo. And if you'd like to see a photo of a classic tokkuri, visit our show notes at sakerevolution. com right now. And you can see some photos of what tokkuris look like, but I'll do my best to describe it. They are. Tall and slender. And one of the characteristics of Tokkuri are the narrow neck. So there's a narrow neck and then they kind of flare out a little bit.

Yes, and based on that, I think there are probably at least 50 to 100 people listening right now who are going, oh, it's the, yeah, that, okay. Yeah, people have definitely seen these.

If you walk into your average sushi restaurant anywhere in the country, you'll see these white ceramic carafes sitting on the counter, people pouring hot sake from them, and they're so classic

Yeah.

and so, you know, integral to the sake experience. You can buy them for as little as three dollars or they go up to very, very expensive ones. And it is, it is a carafe. It's for pouring sake, but not just that. It's also quite often used for heating sake. So this is something that you would fill, fill sake in the carafe, the tokkuri, and you'd set it in a water bath. And it's a vessel for warming sake as well as pouring sake, right?

That's exactly right. In fact, I think the first time I ever warmed my own sake, I used that exact method. because it is, of course, ceramic. Ceramic is very resilient to heat. And it also contains the heat really well. It insulates fairly well. And so you can, you know, it'll keep that sake warm, uh, inside for a little bit.

Yeah, so when you put a porcelain or ceramic tokkuri into hot water, the water actually warms the carafe first, warms the tokkuri first, and then it warms the sake inside. So when you pull it out of the water, you dab it off. There's a lot of residual heat actually hanging out in the vessel itself, and that keeps it warm at the table. So that's one of the advantages of these, tokkuris. Uh, let's talk about some of the materials that they use.

I actually own one that's made of glass. yeah. and I love it. It's one of my favorite, um, intermediary pouring vessels.

Yeah.

When I'm not, when I'm not pouring sake directly from the bottle into the glass, I'll use that. Primarily in my home, it gets used when guests are over.

Oh,

Right, so when you want to pour a couple of different sakes, you pour them into the tokkuri and put those on the table. also if you have perhaps magnums around the house, which is rare, but not unheard of. Uh, it's an easy way to, to keep that sake, keep that sake bottle in the fridge.

Yeah, and it's a lot easier to pour from a tokkuri into a small sake cup versus from a giant 1. 8 liter bottle.

Well, you know you get a little workout with the 1. 8 liter bottle, but yes, I think that's Definitely a good idea, especially as the night wears on you Don't want anybody slipping and then the sake is all over the place and

yeah, for sure. So we've got the classic ceramic, we have glass. Uh, there's also sometimes they make them in metal tin very often, hammered tin. And you also see them, I've seen them in wood as well. Now wood wouldn't be used for warming sake, but it is a form factor that I've seen before with the classic tall skinny tokkuri with the narrow neck and then the flared mouth. I think that the shape is so iconic that people have made it in all different materials.

I don't think I've ever seen one in wood before. That's interesting.

Yeah. I've seen like a wood tokkuri and Ochoko set kind of carved out of bamboo or something like that. So it's not, it's not common, but they make them in all different materials. So it's something to look out for. Now, the next thing to talk about when it comes to tokkuri is what are the sizes?

Hmm. That is a good question. I've never even, I've never thought of the size of the tokkuri as far as what kind of, are we talking like, there's like physically how big is, or, or what kind of volume does it hold?

Yeah, what kind of volume does it

Okay. And, and is there a standard? Mm hmm.

There is a

A ha! I knew it! And is this standard, uh, is this standard perhaps calculated in Go? Ah! So, Tim, for our, um, listeners at home who might not have listened to Go. Every episode in the Vessel series, which we, we did talk about Go, I believe in one of them.

we did when we talked about the Masu, the M A S U, Masu. So the Masu is the, the square wooden box. And that has a base measurement of 180 milliliters. Which is considered one go or one standard serving of sake. And Tokkuri also come in different go measurements. So very often there's a one go or two go, and it's either 180 ml or 360 ml. And when you're in a restaurant, it is very common in Japan to say, Oh, I want this sake, give me a to go serving.

Uh oh.

So, You very often see them in either the 180 ml or the 360 ml. Those are the two most common sizes that you see.

So 180 matches up with, a one cup is exactly 180 milliliters. Um, so that, that's excellent to know. And then imagine just two of those. So

It's also very often one cup. It's uh, the smaller Tokkuri size is often 180 ml. And you can also imagine it as one quarter of a standard sake bottle size.

if you have four of those, you have done a whole bottle of sake.

You have done a whole

Yeah.

sake.

And they said I wasn't good at math. I don't know. Excellent. Excellent.

Yeah, so those are the sizes you can look for, but I think there are a lot of Tokkuri Like made in China and made elsewhere, and they might not stick strictly to those measurements. So you can get novelty sizes in all different sizes as well. So I don't want anyone to think it's just limited to those. But if you buy a Japanese tokkuri, very often they're sold in, in those two sizes. They're very common. So if you see a smaller one, chances are it holds 180 ml.

we mentioned, you know, how tokkuri get used, in restaurants, mostly, uh, restaurants here, domestically restaurants in Japan. I talked about how I use them in house. do you ever have a chance to use tokkuri home? Mm

enjoy using tokkuri. I have a couple very fine Arita porcelain ones, some ceramic ones. And I use them both for hot and cold sake. They're more associated with hot sake because as we mentioned, you can take these ceramic tokkuri and put them right in a hot water bath and warm them up. But you can also put them in the fridge and kind of chill them a little bit and then use them to serve cold sake as well. So I, I enjoy it.

Oh, no, I'm laughing. Cause you're right.

You know, we've talked so often about that super yummy sake that you just keep one more splash, one more splash, one more splash, and then you turn around and the bottle's gone. Whereas if you pour tokkuri at a time, you can measure and, I think it slows your roll a little bit and helps you enjoy sake. And I agree with you, I tend to bring the tokkuri out more often when I have guests over and I'm sharing sake with someone.

The rough and tumble bottle. I'm still laughing about the portion control. That's just, that is, that is such a phenomenally, uh, like on the nose. Great use for it. Oh, that's

Yeah, so if, if any of our listeners are curious about using a tokkuri for warming sake, please visit our show notes again at sakerevolution. com. And we're going to have a downloadable PDF there that shows you step by step how you can warm sake at home using a water bath and a tokkuri.

Excellent. I love it.

Also wanted to mention one final thing before we move on to our tasting today, and that's a few words about etiquette and polite service.

Ooh, okay.

Yeah. do you know the rules of handling your tokkuri?

so I'm gonna, crib some things I learned from a previous episode on sake etiquette that we've done, and I'm going to say that I should not be pouring my own.

That's

that, is that something you want to tell me? Uh, is that, is that not, is that not where you're going?

that wasn't where I was going

All right. But, but true, but not, but not where we're going. Okay. Tim, where were we going?

Well, when you have a tokkuri, this tall slender carafe with the narrow neck. In Japan, again, this is for Japanese etiquette. You don't have to do this in the US. Every time, but I find when it comes to etiquette, Japanese etiquette related to sake, it's better to know the proper way and deviate when you feel comfortable. Uh, but I'm not saying everyone has to pour sake this way, but in Japan with a tokkuri in more formal settings,

a lot of, uh,

lead up,

yes, it's like really qualifying this one a lot.

in Japan, if you want to be, The most polite you can be when pouring sake, it's considered polite to hold the tokkuri with two hands when you pour.

Ooh,

Yes. Yes. One handed tokkuri pouring is considered more casual, a little bit more friendly, a little bit more, you know, uh, familiar. So if you want to show respect to the person you're pouring to, in Japanese culture, the expectation is you would Hold the tokkuri with one hand and balance with the other hand and your both hands are touching the tokkuri when you pour. So that's the most formal and most polite way.

Hmm. You know, when you say it like that, I'm like, of course, you know, it makes sense after you, after you hear it. Um, but I would not have, uh, I would not have come up with that. Cause I don't think we actually went over that on our etiquette episode. So I'm learning something new today.

Yeah, and I have another piece of etiquette specifically for tokkuri and one, one challenge with tokkuri is that when you've been pouring from them, you don't always know What's left inside because they're,

You're absolutely right.

So there's two things you should not do in polite company. The,

Okay.

the, if

right, Tim. Thing number one, what do I not do at the light company with my

so you don't want to peer into the tokkuri like you're looking through a kaleidoscope,

Okay. So, so don't, don't hold it up and kind of, okay,

don't hold the opening up to your eye and try to see how much liquid is left in there. That's considered bad manners.

okay. That makes sense. I can see that.

yeah, And the other thing that's kind of bad form is when you pick up the tokkuri and you hold it next to your ear and you ring it back and forth like a bell. To hear any sloshing.

it also makes sense. I guess I don't think it ever occurred to me to try that. Um, there are situations though, and I do wonder how much is left in there because as we pointed out earlier, these are generally speaking, porcelain. They are opaque. They have weight to them by nature of being porcelain. How do you know how much is left in there?

I have an answer to this question.

I thought you might.

I actually asked a brewer once. I'm like, okay, I know I'm not supposed to peer inside with my eye. I'm not supposed to shake it. How do I know how much is left in? And the answer is a little unsatisfactory, but you're supposed to know by the weight. When you pick it up, you should know the weight of your tokkuri empty roughly. And then you, when it's getting near empty. You should know based on the weight. That was the

you need to study your tokkuri before party.

Puma, I have one more. One more no no when it comes to tokkuri.

One more no no I'm ready for. What do I not do with my

So if you're having a party with many people and you have multiple tokkuris out on the table, if you have a little sake left in this one, a little sake left in this one, one thing you should never do is pour one into the other and kind of pour

Hmm. Consolidate.

Yes. Again, among friends, no one's going to care, but if you're in a more formal situation or maybe a business dinner, that would be viewed as bad form as well.

If I am out to dinner with a Japanese brewer, I should definitely not do that. heh heh heh heh heh heh heh heh Noted.

Yes.

Uh, well, alright, now this was actually a lot of fun. I was like, there's a lot of stuff about tokkuri that I didn't know going into this episode. Clearly.

Yes. And of course, never drink from your tokkuri. also

goes without saying, because so, so the one thing that I was like, so typically when we do this series, what we do is we, we take the sake we're going to be having that week and we pour it into the vessel of the week. And then we also pour it into the wine glass and try to see kind of where those bring us in this case, since this is an intermediary device. What are we doing?

Yeah. I think we should just put our sake into our tokkuri and enjoy it out of our wine as we usually do.

Excellent. That sounds great. And what is that sake? You might be asking yourself? Well, we've got the answer for you right here. Uh, this week out of our Tokkuri, we wanted to pick something that we felt would go pretty well cold, but also pretty well warmed in order to kind of keep in with the theme of the Tokkuri, which can facilitate both options. So we've got the, Choryo, Tokubetsu Junmai Omachi.

hmm.

which is very interesting. It was battled back in June. again, this is a Omanchi. now the, another interesting thing about it actually is the Omanchi is from Takashima in Okayama Prefecture, so the, The home of omachi, breweries often like to, to, to mention when their, when their omachi has come from Okayama because that's the, the, the, the home. Um, this has been milled down to 68%, which is, Very specific. Uh, the sake meter value is, plus 2. 5 and the acidity is 1. 4.

I don't really know. I'm so excited to try this. I have not had this sake before, but we have had Choryo brand on the show before, and they're really, really well known for their taru sake or their cedar barrel aged sake. So I think we featured their cedar taru before.

in our Taru episode.

And I know, John, you're a big fan of omachi.

I am.

uh, so. I'm excited to try this. I've never had this sake before. And I also want to mention that for a 10 year cold aged sake, the price for this was pretty reasonable and affordable, wasn't it?

Yeah, it was actually, almost alarmingly inexpensive. I'm going to

Could we give, could we give a range for our listeners? I'm sure they'll be curious.

this, sake was under 30 in New York, Manhattan.

Usually aging a sake by the brewery tends to add to the cost. So we'll have to see. I'm going to expect a little bit of rice forward flavors, probably. And some, maybe some caramelized notes from the aging, even though it's cold storage, there might be some caramelization of the sugars over those 10 years. I have mine prepared chilled. So I'm going to try it chilled today. Uh, but I'm so excited to get this into the tokkuri.

Excellent. Um, by the way, I am right with you. I think that we're going to be getting a little bit of that caramelization. Not as much, nothing, nothing like you would expect for a 10 year old sake. and, it's going to be, there's going to be a richness and depth to it. That, that's kind of what I'm thinking. I know I'm really taking really taking a big

So John, should we get this into our tokkuris?

Let's do it.

Okay.

This is gonna be tricky. I've never poured into a Tokkuri on the show before.

All right. Well, I'm ready to,

All right, here we go. now I'm going to make the second journey from the Tokkuri

turi into the glass. Here we go.

Uh, so one thing I've learned about this is that Tokkuri is pretty quiet. Pouring into the Tokkuri was very quiet. Pouring out of the Tokkuri was pretty quiet. It's a stealthy vessel that we have here.

Alright, let's give this a smell. Mmm. Okay. It smells really ricey.

It really, really does. Um, but before we talk about. That smell. I do want to point out that this does not look like a koshu.

No, it's got some, a hint of yellow to

Right. If you, if you told me this was just like Moroka, I'd be like, okay. Yeah. Um, but it, it doesn't look aged, but that's that cold storage.

Mmm.

You're right about that aroma, though. It is so, um,

Yeah. it almost smells, instead of rice, it almost smells like barley. You know, it smells like very grain forward.

Yeah, and oh, like, like toasted.

Mmm.

yeah.

Okay. Let's give it a taste. Well, I know, John, you and I have improved a lot since 2013, so I hope this sake has improved a lot as well.

okay. So my very bold prediction of depth has, has maybe. come through. It's a very, it's a lot going on here. But it still has a lot of that, and maybe it's a power of suggestion Tim. But that that toasty barley kind of thing is present on the on the tongue.

Yeah.

some of that.

For me, I have a lot of, I mean, you and I have had this debate. Is it caramel? Is it caramel? But caramel slash caramel.

Yes. I'm saying this sake is both.

Yes. So there, there's definitely a little bit of sweetness there, but it's like a caramel sweetness and. For me, the aroma was a little more pronounced with that barley toasted rice aroma. On the palate, it's a little more reserved and there's a, there's a trace of sweetness there, but it feels toasted and caramelized. Yeah. Very interesting sake. Hmm.

you told me that this was perhaps a three year regular age sake, that would totally track. So 10 year cold age, I think you're meeting at certain point, right? But it definitely, tastes aged. It definitely tastes like koshu But I cannot help but wonder, what does this taste like warmed up? Because that might be a place where this can shine. I think that room temperature and warm is where, uh, is where your, your older, your, your age sake sometimes, you know, gets, gets a little burst of life.

Yeah. I think without a doubt, this sake would fare very well for warming up and the tokkuri is the perfect vessel for doing that. So, I think that warm would bring out more of a, my prediction would be a little bit of a spicy note. Like, um, when the caramel flavors get a little bit warmed up, sometimes you can get a hint of like, almost like baking spices and things like that in, in koshu sake. And I think that we would get some of that here for sure.

That sounds like a pretty, uh, a decent prediction. I think that that I can see that happening.

Yeah. And this style of sake generally like aged, cold aged for 10 years. And this is a Tokubetsu Junmai Omachi again, to remind our listeners, this type of sake, this profile is generally really good for warming. So you can really look for, uh, an expansion of those ricey flavors. And I think the Omachi profile would come forward even more when you give it a gentle warming.

Yeah. I think that the, and that koshu, the caramel is kind of, in my mind, it's, it's getting in the way of that omachi note that I, that I love so much. It's hard to detect in the sake because it's, there's so much more going on and maybe it's just hiding and needs a little, a little warmth to bring it out.

Yeah. Yeah. You know, warming in general, tends to bring the alcohol notes forward and the warming sensation in general. And I think in this case, it's going to bring the rice a little bit forward as well.

Yeah.

Well, John, did you learn something about tokkuri in this episode?

Tim, I learned a lot about Tokkuri in episode, mostly about etiquette in Tokkuri. But you know, what are you going to do? Uh, it was, uh, this was fun. Uh, the Vessel series is always, uh, is always a good time for me. I always have fun with these.

Yeah. Well, you can't go wrong with a little etiquette.

Never, a little etiquette goes a long way.

I should have said that. A little etiquette goes a long way.

People remember when you don't do the etiquette, right, they forget when you do it, right.

I think it's, it's worthwhile to have a few tokkuri in your house, again, for portion control and for serving your guests. And for warming sake, it's like, it's a Swiss army knife of, of sake vessels. I think it does so much. All right. Well, John, it was so nice to taste with you. This sake was so interesting that we enjoyed today. it's approaching omachi from a different point of view, but I really enjoyed tasting it. And, uh, it was really, really interesting to have that from our Tokkuris.

and there's another really great way to support the show. You can go out there and review us on Apple podcasts or any other podcast platform that you might interact with, uh, gets the word out about the show helps, uh, the algorithm find us so that when people are looking for shows about sake, we become a little bit easier for them to get ahold of. So on that note, Timothy. Thank you very much for coming by today. Um, don't forget to raise your tokkuri two hands, two hands, Tim, two hands.