Moto Photo

I was going to use "Hello Moto" for the title of this post, but sometimes even my own humor is too much for me... ;)

Here's a shot of the start of my first batch of sake in the moto stage ater 48 hours. The enzymes present in the koji have broken down the rice starches into sugar, and liquified the whole lot as a result. It smells AWESOME, like something sweet you would eat for breakfast.

The next step is to add the yeast to create a yeast starter culture. After the starter is healthy comes more rice and koji. 

Now, I have a question: How should this taste? It's sweet as I expected it to be, however, it does have a slight bit of acidity. I was not expecting that. After more research I probably should have. 

The acidity comes from the action of lactobacillus and will eventually contribute to creating a balanced sake flavor when this batch is finished. The trick now is that my process has to allow for the yeast to take over the moto and everything else to be dormant or as close as I can get.