Hiire: heating sake to preserve it
Hiire: calentado del sake para conservarlo
- Date
- 1568 · confidence medium
- Place
- Nara, Japan
- Credited to
- Monks and brewers of the temples of Nara
- Field
- Life & health
What it is
Sake masters heated rice wine in vessels at around 60 degrees to kill microbes and stop it from souring. The Tamonin temple diary documents it in 1568, about three centuries before Pasteur.
Source: the Tamonin-nikki, diary of monks of Kofuku-ji temple (15th-17th centuries). It was empirical heating, with no germ theory.
What it led to
- conservation and large-scale distribution of sake
- the breweries of Nada and Itami in the Edo period
- an Asian precedent for pasteurisation