Len's News, Notes, and Stuff

Learning more about sake at Izumi (OSWSC)

Education, truly learning something new, is one of life’s greatest pleasures. Thus, I found myself greatly enjoying another evening sip-n-learn session at the Ontario Springwater Sake Company (OSWSC, also known as Izumi, the brand name for their sake). The topic this time was Tasting Sake.

On a bit of a sad note, I learned today that Takahashi-san, their toji or brewmaster, will not be staying too long in Toronto. Her husband and family are still over in Japan!

Today, it was Greg (one of the apprentice brewers) and Kaz Hayashi (the general manager) who ran the session.

The first thing we tried was the moromi from one of the mature tanks.  Compared to the one fromb last week, this one was noticeably stronger, a little bitter, with no riciness but very noticeable alcohol. The bitterness is, apparently, characteristic of sake that’s ready to be pressed. This tank in particular will be pressed tomorrow, and has been fermenting for the past 23 days.

The next sake we tried was Teion Sakura. It’s a little different than I remember it, but still quite enjoyable. It was lightly fruity, with some acidity, and a very forward personality. It was bold and brash like a teenager, but still smooth and refined – clearly a teenager girl from a good school, to continue the analogy.

Next in line was a shiboritate, or fresh-pressed sake. In fact, this one had only been pressed 2 days ago. It had subtle fruitiness without the sourness or forward personality of Teion Sakura. A bit of dryness or astringency but still very smooth and refined. It was, however, lacking the mushroom aroma and cheesy flavor that the shiboritate I tried before summer this year had exhibited. I was a little disappointed, but since the shiboritate can be from any desired sake, I should expect it to be different each time.

Next was Nama-Cho filtered, and served warm. It was savory, well rounded, and very nice.

Warm sake is not for low quality sake, though that is a common belief. The warmth actually accentuates everything, including all the negative characteristics. However, a high quality, well-balance sake will be great chilled or warm, whichever suits the weather and the food best. However, this is best with pasteurized or filtered sake where the freshness isn’t the focus the way it would be with a good unpasteurized and unfiltered sake.

However, to show us the difference, we then tried an unfiltered Nama-Cho also served warm. It was a totally different beast! The flavor was much bolder, still very well rounded, but just very unmistakably full flavored.

Filtering removes particles of rice and yeast and decreases flavor. Pasteurization removes even more fresh flavors. Most in-store sakes are double-pasteurized, losing twice the fresh flavor. Nama-Cho, designed for wide distribution through stores, is single pasteurized. The unfiltered version that we tried still contained particles that impart extra and more complex flavors.

Each sake very different, based just on the koji and fermentation. The exact same ingredients are used for each sake that the OSWSC makes. It is what they do with it all that makes each sake so different from one another. Filtering after the koji, fermentation and pressing makes a huge difference, as we experienced with the warm Nama-Cho.

All of the sake at OSWSC are junmai – meaning no brewer’s alcohol is artificially added at any point. Alcohol is added to low-quality sakes to make things easier on the maker – you don’t have to control the fermentation as skilfully because you can crank it up with warmer temperatures and then kill the fermentation by adding enough alcohol to the mixture. Alcohol is also added to some high-quality sakes as well to enhance the aroma by acting as an evaporative vector for the scent molecules, much like the alcohol in fragrances that you spray or dab on yourself.

So how does one enjoy the bouquet of sake? First, smell without swirling. Then sip, breathe in gently and quietly from mouth, and breathe out through nose. That is how to enjoy the bouquet.

There was no theory part of today’s sip-n-learn, but it was definitely a round of experiential learning. I am left with the conclusion that we are lucky to have local sake brewery. Unfiltered, unpasteurized sake has more flavor, and you can’t get them from regular distribution chains. The uncontrolled conditions inherent in many of today’s beverage and packaged food supply chains means that you can only ship pasteurized, filtered sake. Without “cold chain” logistics, you couldn’t be sure otherwise that the sake would be good and remain the way you intended it to be. That is why we get much flatter flavor profiles from store-bought sake.

If I could get a taste experience like the unfiltered Nama-Cho via regular store-bought sake, that would be fantastic. However, I can’t and heading down to the visit the folks at the OSWSC in the Distillery District isn’t really much of a chore. I can live with having to go a little out of my way for fresh, superbly crafted sake!

BIXI Toronto Gets Better

I had a bear of a time getting started with Bixi earlier this summer. Thankfully, my experience as a rider since then has been quite nice. The main thing about Bixi is that it’s convenient. Particularly for someone who doesn’t live downtown, Bixi bikes are a great way to get around downtown quickly, economically, and responsibly.

Bixi’s service zone had originally been limited to the downtown core. All bike stations were within the bounds of Bloor and the lake, Spadina and Jarvis. That’s pretty decent, but that only covers downtown proper. What about all the other interesting places just outside the downtown core?

Since the day Bixi Toronto started up, there was a lot of interesting stuff that remained just out of reach. You’d have to park your bike at a station on the edge of the Bixi coverage zone and then walk over.

Not any more!

Bixi has been listening to its customers!

When I responded to a survey about two months ago, I made a few suggestions in the free-form comments at the end. I suggested “selective enlargement of Bixi coverage”. It doesn’t make sense to uniformly expand the rectangular area of coverage. It does, however, make sense to send “fingers” of coverage out to places and areas that folks will want to go to because they already go there.

I suggested 3 such extentions:

1. Go out east along the lakeshore to the Distillery District
2. Go out west along Bloor to the Annex and Koreatown
3. Go up north along Spadina to Dupont station near the George Brown campus

Since I had to go down to the Distillery District today after work – yes, for a sip’n learn at the Ontario Spring Water Sake Company (a great local sake brewery with a terribly long name) – I checked an online Bixi map before heading out of the office. I don’t usually check the map because I know where my “usual” stations are located. This time, however, I was checking to make sure that my nearby station actually had bikes ready.

When I opened up the map online, I was in for a surprise.

The Bixi coverage zone has expanded! There is now a Bixi station at the Distillery District! (Suggestion 1, DONE!) There is now a Bixi station right at Bloor & Bathurst – steps away from Tosho Knife Arts – and another almost at Christie station! (Suggestion 2, DONE!) There is now a Bixi station right at… no, sorry, not Dupont Station, but there is one just on the north end of the posh Yorkville area (Suggestion 3… modified)

I don’t think it was my suggestions alone that led to this. However, I think many of us suggested the same thing, and Bixi smartly figured that if enough customers are saying the same thing, it’s probably worthwhile to extend coverage in a selective manner.

Bixi Toronto left a bad taste in my mouth when I was trying to get set up with them. I occasionally get a lemon of a bike which doesn’t change gears properly, but overall I’ve been a happy Bixi rider all summer and autumn – and yes, even now in December, I’m still a happy Bixi rider. I’m going to keep riding until there’s snow on the ground. I have to admit that yes, Bixi Toronto is getting better.

At least it is for us existing customers. I can’t vouch for their new-customer-setup process.

Talking with the Toji: What Makes The Sake Special

I’m a sucker and a stickler for quality. This applies across the board, and it is what draws me towards handcrafted, artisanal products. Toronto is lucky to have its own local sake brewery, the Ontario Spring Water Sake Company – whom you’ll know on the shelves under the Izumi brand. When a “sip’n learn” session came up with the toji, the master brewer, I had to attend.

The toji at OSWSC is Yoshiko Takahashi, one of the few women toji in the world. When she began her journey into the craft of sake brewing, there were no women toji. The only women in the field were wives of brewery owners, and they didn’t work in the brewery itself. Thus, when she began to learn, she was often the only woman in each class and was, in fact, excluded or rejected from some classes simply because of her gender. A big part of her education was thus via correspondence courses.

After 4 years of book learning and seminars, Takahashi-san began to work for a local sake brewery. There were 12 breweries in the Nagano area where she lived. All 12 toji were getting on in years and were eager to pass on their skill, craft, and knowledge to the next generation of sake brewers. It was thus that she got her break and got to learn from master toji though she was the only woman working in the field from the ground up. Working at a small brewery also allowed her to gain experience in every step of the sake-making process.

Her master took 40 years to work his way up the traditional hierarchy to become toji. Such was the state of the craft of traditional sake in Japan, and her passion for sake, that she herself became toji only a little over 10 years after starting to work in the breweries.

It wasn’t long before she started to make her mark on the craft. One of Takahashi-san’s sakes won a Gold Medal for best sake in the Kanto region (on the eastern side of Japan, includes the Greater Tokyo Area, and is home to 1/3 of the Japanese population).

She was a pioneer in the field by becoming one of the world’s first female toji. She is a pioneer still by being Canada’s first toji. In fact, the first toji in all of eastern North America. Her passion for excellence in sake keeps her at the forefront in many ways.

I asked her what was the hardest part of sake making for her to learn. She replied that all of it was difficult to learn, but the most difficult to learn was how to work the koji. Fermenting the rice with yeast, thus making the koji, takes 48 hours. Yet this 48 hour period determines to a great degree what the next 20 days in the fermentation tanks will produce.

Not that things are easy in the tanks. She explained that the fermenting water, rice and yeast mixture – the moromi – is like a child. It requires constant attention and guidance. Being too harsh with it is bad, but so is being too easy on it. Sometimes the moromi is rebellious, and you must push to put it on the right track, but sometimes letting go and giving it space and time to develop and mature on its own is the right way.

Like parenting, producing quality sake is an art.

The sake from the OSWSC is very truly hand-crafted. The sake is made with all-natural ingredients, with all-manual effort. The rice, water and yeast do their thing, and the weather and temperature make big differences. There is an underlying science, of course, but this is not a mass-production brewery with everything made uniform to produce a uniform product. No, there are variations in the rice – it’s a natural ingredient after all – and the brewery is small enough that you feel all the changes in the weather.

What they do there to make their sake is an art, and what the toji does is truly craftsmanship in action.

When I asked the Takahashi-san what was the signature that she tries to work into all her sakes, she said it was the fruitiness and acidity. These are elements that rarely appear in sake in Japan, she says, but here in North America it greatly appeals to an audience used to the characters and personalities of grape wines. This, she says, is something she will pass on to her successor if she is right that this is what Toronto sake drinkers enjoy and appreciate.

While the other attendees asked questions about the technical side of sake-making – and I both understand and appreciate where they’re coming from – I was far more interested in the craftsman and what made the toji and her sake special.

I asked her what was the greatest life lesson from over 20 years in the world of sake. Humility, she replied. The greatest lesson she learned from her experience has been humility.

Making sake is a team effort. Yes, the toji guides things, but one person alone cannot do everything, not even in a micro-brewery like the OSWSC. When she was young, she had to get her views across. Now, though, she has learned to listen to the views and thoughts of her team around her.

Ken, the owner of the brewery, chimed in and added that he has learned, from seeing her in action, that of the greatest skills of a master toji is the ability to motivate and guide a good team. Leadership: the ability to get the best from others to accomplish something together that none could do alone.

Thus, it makes sense that after 20 years, Yoshiko Takahashi finds the greatest lesson that sake has taught her is humility.

The session wasn’t all talk. There was some sipping and testing, too.

The moromi was a unique experience. It was drawn from the tank, 13 or 14 days into the 20-day fermentation period. The moromi was sweet and fruity, but unrefined. Yet, though still a little rough, noticeably ricey, and not yet sake, you can see the personality come through. Like a child growing up, you can see what the moromi will become when it matures.

Nama Nama, the brewery’s signature sake, was fruity, strong, and bold. It was decidedly more interesting than the bottle of Nama Nama that I tried back in April, which I had found rather flat, uninspired and similar to “generic” sake. Perhaps it is a matter of freshness – I did not drink my bottle immediately after buying it. Perhaps it is the weather – cold weather is, apparently, the best time for producing quality sake.

We tried a warm Nama Cho, which had some of the fruitiness and acidity of Nama Nama but muted and softened. This was a softer, gentler experience. Certainly it was a far cry from the other warm sakes I have tried in the past, which were harsh, unpleasant affairs.

Then we tried a drip, no press sake. This one was clean crisp, with a lighter taste. Not a “generic” taste profile, but very different from the others.

I continue to be impressed by the sakes at OSWSC. They are amongst the most interesting that I have tried, and they are hand-crafted by a master toji and her team with quality and authenticity foremost in mind.

Toronto is fortunate indeed.

Random facts:

• Warm sake should be served at body temperature or just a little above. The warm Nama Cho that we tried was served at 42*C.
• Winter is the best time for sake. The cold temperature in the brewery is hard on the people, but good for the sake (which, when fermenting, should not get above 18*C) (you don’t want it too cold though, as the story of their first batch, Demondori Mesumi, illustrates)
• Natural, traditional sake is good for your health. There is a Japanese saying, “A little sake is medicine, but too much is poison.”

Pursue Excellence ‘Til It Hurts – Because That’s What It Always Takes

Excellence – and the pursuit of it – truly grab me emotionally. It’s why I like what I like. It’s why I’ve been interested in the hobbies and pursuits that I’ve done. It’s what I have sought in my professional life, and what I am now trying to build. It’s how I gauge cars, knives, guns, and all sorts of “guy things”, but also things like food, service, presentations, and speeches. It’s not just about things – it’s about excellence in whatever we choose to do and choose to associate with.

When I saw a documentary about Joel Bukiewicz of Cut Brooklyn, an outfit that makes hand-made kitchen knives in Brooklyn (duh!), it truly moved me and inspired me.

“So you go into the shop, you cut yourself, burn yourself, fuck stuff up, you ruin something you’ve worked on for 3 weeks. You never make that mistake again. This is how I learned.

It just takes buckets of blood, sweat, and fuckin’ work to get there. That’s it. To get good. To get competent.

And then once you get competent, maybe you have it in you to become an artist. Maybe you don’t.

Before you get to a place where you can actually make art with the skills that you learn, you have to master the basics. Mastering the basics they say you need 10,000 hours – it’s like 5 years of 40-hour weeks. I’d say it’s more like 15,000 hours. It takes a lot of work to get there.

And when you get there, that’s Day 1.

Then you can start and you can begin making something you can maybe call art.”

Malcolm Gladwell drove home the point in his book Outliers that it takes 10,000 hours of focused practice to become good at something. That’s 5 years, full-time, only doing the thing you’re trying to perfect – programming, playing an instrument, painting, photography, pottery, knives, or anything at all.

As Joel says, it might actually be closer to 15,000 hours – and that just takes you to Step 1. That just gets you to Good. You’ve still got to keep pushing to actually become an artist at it, to be Great, to be Excellent.

“Really, in reality, the (hunting) knives I was making, people buy, and they would sit in a cabinet somewhere and never be used for the purpose they were made for. It just short-circuited the entire creative process for me. I was in this spot where I was like, can I make this work, will it work, do I want it to work? So I thought this is probably not gonna work.

What might work though is a kitchen line because there’s so many chefs in New York, A. And B, I thought it’d be super easy to grind and make a kitchen knife. It’s gotta be the easiest thing in the world and people will buy them. It’ll be fantastic.

It turned out just from the design point of view and actually making a good kitchen knife, that it was really hard. There are 5 lines for every kitchen knife, and if you don’t get them just right it’s gonna be a piece of shit.

As I was designing it took me well over a year and a half – it was like 2 years – before I had a piece where I was like, “There it is! That’s it right there!”

F***, how many of us can really say we’ve developed and refined our skills to the point where we know where that thin, thin line between pretty good or good and excellent really is?

This is the kind of thing that energizes me.

This is why, when I was dancing, I’d practice the basic movements over and over again. I was hard on myself to get things right. I did it for 2 years practicing 2 nights per week. I can tell you with blazing obviousness that I did not get anywhere close to excellent. I didn’t put enough time into it yet.

This is why the biggest thrill for me from playing paintball regularly wasn’t the games. It was the drills. The basics. The fundamental building blocks that make excellence possible. Then, of course, it was fun to get out in real games and kick ass. We did this every weekend for over a year. We’d run drills for 3 hours from 9 til 12 – which was well before nearly anyone else got to the fields – and then play in games against opponents for another 3 hours. We got good, but we still weren’t great. We hadn’t put in enough time yet.

It all begins with the basics and fundamentals. Ask any athlete. Ask any soldier. Ask any musician. So why should it be different in any line of work, any line of endeavour, any kind of output? It isn’t. I’m still trying to distill what I do at my day gig down to the basics – I want to drill and perfect what I do at a building block level to be able to excel at the higher level when you put all the blocks together.

“The difference between my knife that spends 15 hours in my hands all the way through the process, and a knife that gets made in Germany by like 10 different robots in 15 minutes is all really in the details.

My flat-out mission statement with what I do is to make every single knife I make the very best knife I’ve ever made.”

This mission, this view of one’s work, is where we should all be at. It’s where I want to be at.

I’m not right now, but I will be. I am going to make my environment one where excellence – not safety, not the avoidance of risk, not the minimization of exposure – is a key focus. That will probably have to be my own business. That’s okay – I’ve

“I set up shop and just started working and working. It was an awesome place. I had never worked in a studio environment before. It was a whole floor with 20 studios, filled with people doing just shit that they love to do. To me that was like a whole new thing. I didn’t realize that I could have a community like that. It was like I just landed in a spot where all these people were just doing stuff that they were just pumped to do. They were sacrificing their time, their money, just to push whatever their endeavor was to make their dreams become things and alive. That first community was electric, it was “My God, somebody just turned the lights on!”

Can one build a culture of excellence and the pursuit of perfection when it comes to emergency management? F***in’ A, I sure hope so.

Can one build a culture of excellence and the pursuit of perfection when it comes to a business? Real estate? Software development? I’m going to find out – and if I can’t, then that means it’s not the field for me to be in – or I’m not going about it the right way.

If you believe in excellence, if it turns your crank, if it energizes you… seek out others who think likewise. Give your business to those who think likewise.

Keep and nurture it in you. Keep pushing. Keep driving hard.

Keep getting better and better. Keep on keeping on.

Who’s Really the Risk Averse Party? Politicians or Bureaucrats?

It’s not often that strangers initiate conversations with one another in the big city. It happens a few times now and then, though, and I was in just one such spontaneous conversation on the subway the other day. I was reading (and still am reading) the book The Millionaire Mind. It’s a great book, by the way – one that I read for the first time 7 years ago, and now that I read it again I’m gaining more from it than I did before. I guess the lens of time and experience will do that when it comes to reading a good book!

In any case, some guy on the subway starts talking to me about books and reading. At one point he asks me, “So do you want to be an entrepreneur?”

“Yes, I do.”

“What do you do right now?”

“I work for the provincial government.”

“Oh. That’s quite a change, then.”

I agreed, omitting anything about my having tried my own business ventures before. I added in that it’s incredibly different because the government culture is very risk-averse … and then capped that off by saying I think it’s because politicians are risk averse and that just cascades down through the organization.

He immediately replied that he disagreed. “I know a few politicians and they’re some of the most entrepreneurial people I know. It’s the bureaucrats and unionized workers who are risk averse.”

I was going to retort about how that’s not what it looks like from what I see and hear at work, but unfortunately we arrived at his stop and he had to dash out.

What he said got me thinking, though. Have I been accusing the wrong parties for the serious, entrenched risk aversion that I see in the government? Politicians, after all, had to take a chance to run for office. Many made the effort and took the risk in order to make a difference in the community, province, or the country. They had something in mind, and they took risks in order to achieve it. Maybe it isn’t the politicians after all.

The way the government bureaucracy is structured, each minister has their own ministry. Makes sense, right? That’s the Minister’s Office. Immediately below the MO is the Deputy Minister’s Office, the DMO. The DM is the most senior public servant in the ministry, and acts as the bridge between the political master and the (theoretically) impartial bureaucratic machinery beneath. Everything that eventually goes to the MO has to pass through the DMO first. Hmmm… maybe that’s the key right there.

I thought about it some more, and it reminded me of Auto from the movie Wall-E. That’s the red-eyed cyclopic autopilot that controls the ship. With each successive generation aboard the spaceliner, the human captain is ostensibly in charge. Yet, as we see in each captain’s portrait, Auto is there in every photo, right there behind each and every captain. As it turns out in the movie, it isn’t the Captain who is ever really in charge most of the time. It is Auto, who controls what the Captain sees and hears and who prods the Captain to do this and that.

Perhaps there is something like that – an information gatekeeper – that happens with Deputy Ministers. Perhaps it is the most senior bureaucrats who are supremely risk averse and not the politicians themselves.

That’s certainly food for thought and has me re-evaluating how I see politicians. (I’ve considered running for public office in the future, so I find the thought reassuring!)