Kanpai! It’s Sake Saturday!
From Wikipedia, “Sake is an alcoholic beverage made by fermenting rice that has been polished to remove the bran (hard outer layer of the grain). Sake is produced by a brewing process that is more similar to that of beer, where starch is converted into sugars, which ferment into alcohol.”
The solids that are left behind after pressing and filtering the fermented sake are called “kasu” (or lees) and THAT happens to be the inclusion ingredient in both of these Fossa Chocolate bars from Singapore.
First up is a 38% white chocolate made with sake kasu produced in the process of brewing Daiginjo – the highest grade of sake brewed by Asahara Shuzo Brewery.
The base chocolate has an eggy yellow color and does give off a flan or crème caramel flavor. By itself, it’s creamy smooth and melts easily (yet slowly) on the tongue.
Looking at the crumbled topping on the back of the bar, you might almost think it is a spice (like cinnamon), tiny pieces of granola or droplets of caramelized sugar.
These little nuggets are quite hard, chewy and tend to stick in your teeth. I was surprised by the initial granny smith/tart apple flavor that finishes with a lightly effervescent, malty and alcoholic aftertaste. Eaten together, it is like a sake-flavored vanilla pudding!
Next is the limited release, 75% dark chocolate bar in collaboration with artisanal sake curator, KuroKura. This bar has sake kasu sourced from two different craft sake breweries.
From the outer packaging: “The white kasu comes from the Moriki brewery, one of Japan’s smallest, where a husband-and-wife team brew amazingly complex sakes using home-grown organic Yamada Nishiki rice.”
The “white” kasu (which, to me, looks more beige/tan in color) intriguingly tastes like a salty, concentrated tomato paste/fruit leather. Tomatoes are known to be umami (the 5th category of taste along with salty, sweet, sour, and bitter), so it makes sense.
As for the darker pieces, the packaging says: “the red kasu comes from the brewing of Inemankai, a one-of-a-kind sake by the Mukai brewery using a strain of red rice that grows in the master brewer’s hometown of Ine in rural Kyoto.”
By themselves, these “red” kasu taste so much like coffee to me.
Sampling the bar (chocolate + both kasu together), I’m impressed by how juicy and fruity it tastes, starting off very plum/prune-like and then evolving to savory black licorice. This reminds me of a German dopplebock beer, like Samichlaus.
While I might not ever re-purchase these bars, I’m very glad to have tasted them and thrilled to have been able to try both versions together!
P.S. In case you were curious about kanpai (the Japanese way of saying “cheers”), it literally means “dry {sake} cup” or an exhortation to empty your cup of sake, like the phrase “bottoms up.”
Have you ever thought about combining sake with chocolate?
Let me know in the comments below.
For more information on Fossa Chocolate, please visit their website: https://www.fossachocolate.com/
