We Visited SG’s First Sake Brewery and Ended Up Drunk During Working Hours

Orchid Sake Brewery is Singapore’s first sake brewery

For such an esoteric form of drink-making, it almost feels fitting that Singapore’s first sake brewery is in one of the most ulu locations I could think of. It took my colleagues and me a $40 Grab ride to get to the desolate Jurong Food Hub, and the journey lasted a painful 45 minutes. But any motion sickness built up on the way was eased by one fact: we were about to get absolutely smashed with Japanese rice wine fit for Shinto gods.

The folks from Orchid Sake Brewery wasted no time in fetching us from where we dropped off, and soon we were made aware of why the whole place smelled strangely of… fish. As it turns out, we were right next to Jurong Fishery Port, and the building we were in was packed with seafood distributors. Orchid Sake Brewery was the odd one out, having taken over a space once filled by Off Day Beer Company, a local beer brewery.

I was eager to escape that fishy assault on my senses, but before we were let into the brewery proper, there were some precautionary measures to follow. For those who don’t know, sake brewing has an almost clinical precision to it, and any form of contamination in the process can decimate an entire batch.

The first layer of defence at every section of the brewery was clean footwear, so here we were told to switch into rubber slippers. A hair net was also required—can’t have our DNA showing up in the booze, you know?

Perhaps it’s the influence of one too many Japanese films, but for some reason, I imagined the brewery to look something out of the Edo period, with large wooden barrels and men with samurai topknots hard at work. But it was the complete opposite—what we found was a cold and sterile environment, filled with glycol tanks and other industrial equipment.

Reuben Oh, 31, founder of Orchid Sake Brewery, explained that the tanks are modified beer tanks left by the previous beer-focused tenant. They’ve cut open the top and engineered it such that, while makeshift, it can create excellent sake under the watch of Reuben and his team.

But there’s also equipment that looks nothing like the hulking metal machines previously mentioned, such as these dim sum steamers you see above. It is here that the sake brewing process begins—rice is soaked, washed, and then steamed in these bad boys. As you’d expect, the quality of the rice matters. “Our base is always yamadanishiki (a famous sake rice),” Reuben noted. “But we may use some Southeast Asian grains depending on the flavour we are going for.”

So, why the dim sum steamers? “Price, mainly. Dedicated rice steamers cost about $30k, and that’s before we even adjust it to suit our needs. But we do plan on making the switch in the coming months.”

The steamed rice is then moved into a tightly controlled room, where the “koji-making” begins. Steamed rice is inoculated with mould and carefully cultivated, allowing enzymes to develop and break down its starches into sugars.

Image credit: Reuben Oh

Rice is laid out on the table, as seen above, and then house-made koji spores are sprinkled all over it. Reuben explained that it is absolutely essential to control the temperature and humidity at this stage. “When the mould starts to grow on the rice, it actually creates its own heat, so the room temperature can actually go up to 43 degrees. It’s also really humid, too, so we tend to sweat a lot here,” he added, laughing. But don’t worry about hygiene—the team is obsessively clean, ensuring the room is free from any contamination.

Crucially, the room has to be just warm and humid enough to encourage mould growth, but carefully monitored so the rice doesn’t overheat. That’s why this humidifier in the corner is the room’s MVP. Take a bow, little one!

Once the rice is all warm and koji-ed up, it gets transferred to a makeshift sake tank along with water and yeast—and it is here that the fermentation process begins properly.

The rice is kept at the perfect temperature thanks to the tank’s glycol-regulated system, which is closely monitored by the head brewer, Yumika. Speaking of temperature, while the koji-making room tends to be warm, the rest of the brewery is kept cool by Singapore’s favourite appliance: air-conditioning. “In Japan, they tend to make sake in the winter as it is easier to control the heat. But because it’s so hot in Singapore, we just blast the aircon all year round,” said Reuben.

The whole fermentation process takes around 30 days, after which the fermented rice mix is “pressed”, extracting the sake liquid from the solids left behind.

At the end of this long and arduous process, which also involves a ton of cleaning, cleaning, and cleaning, you get these beautiful bottles filled with junmai daiginjo, AKA high-quality premium sake with a rice polishing rate 50%.

What sets Orchid Sake Brewery apart are its drinks inspired by local palates. These include the uTama Tropic Junmai Daiginjo ($80.75), crafted to be more acidic than your average sake—according to Reuben, this makes it a perfect match for Peranakan dishes. There’s also the uTama Native Tokubetsu Junmai ($95), which uses black Sarawak glutinous rice to create notes of pulut hitam.

My colleagues and I were treated to cup after cup of sake, and found ourselves enjoying the complexity and diversity of Orchird Sake Brewery’s offerings. But getting a glimpse into this ancient form of drink-making made us appreciate every sip all the more.

As the alcohol rapidly did its thing on my nervous system, my eyes drifted to a wooden altar near the brewery’s office. “That’s a Shinto altar,” Reuben said, referring to Japan’s ancient religion. “Japan today can be quite divorced from Shinto practices, but sake is one of the few things that still keeps the religion in mind. After all, it was originally brewed as an offering to the gods.”

It’s a wonder that a Singaporean like Reuben would be so enamoured by sake that he would want to start his own brewery. But I kind of get it. After all, sake carries thousands of years of Japanese history, culture, and religion. It also happens to be incredibly delicious.

For an in-depth look into Reuben’s story, we highly recommend MSNews’ Orchid Sake Brewery feature. For a story on the first ice cream uncle in Orchard, read our Uncle Chieng feature.

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Photos taken by Marcus Neo.
This was a media tasting at Orchid Sake Brewery.