(View larger pic) Once you have finished your fermentation period for brewing your sake you need a way to filter the rice lees and yeast from the brew. I have created a step by step process as you can see from the picture above.

Make sure that you have nozzles on all of your buckets except the 2-gallon bucket you will be using to hold your weight. This is pretty self-explanatory so I won't make this a long article. I do want to mention that I did not add in stage two filtering such as using activated charcoal, or any other type of filtering system since there are more than a few. Feel free to copy the picture above.

To get those pesky hoses to connect to your nozzles you can boil them for up to 30 seconds. Don't be fooled by the word pillowcase either, this was chosen because it is the perfect option to filter out the yeast and lees particles that could fit through the mesh of the brewer's bag. the pillowcase is made for people with allergies. I, of course, boiled it first as I do with the brewer's bag to sterilize it. When I was all done with it I was able to turn it inside out and re-boil it to get the "gunk" off of it. DO NOT put it in the washer! Take the time to hand wash it.

Keep an eye on the weight you add because the sake could rise higher than you think in the 5-gallon bucket due to displacement. I am sure you do not want sake flowing into the 2-gallon bucket with your weights in it. if you are using non-premium rice, such as the kind you can buy at your local supermarket, you will notice your sake will be yellow. Again, this is before secondary filtering and dilution to bring the ABV down by using filtered water. I will write a separate how-to article on that in the coming weeks. If you are interested in the type of pillowcase I purchased you can follow this link to Amazon to see. Click here.