What different types are there?
Especially when going to a bigger store in Japan, you might be just watching all the different kind of sake bottles, jars some sake even coming in what reminds of milk cartons. So, you might ask yourself, which one should I be getting, what is best to be drank cold and what hot. There are some terms that you can find from the different kind of containers that can give you a bit of help which one to choose.
Junmaishu
First, you should remember there are basically two types of sake: one that is made of only rice, water and kochi (Koji is a mold, made from steamed rice and Aspergillus oryzae, which is also a mold in itself) This is so called “pure type”. And then there is the other kind which has added alcohol in it. The pure type can use the label 'junmaishu' (meaning as much as 'pure rice sake').
Rice polishing
Then Rice polishing, we can make a distinction in the amount of polishing the rice used for the sake has undergone. To make white rice out of brown rice, all you have to do is take off the outer skin. But, if you polish it even more after that, you end up with just the cores of the rice grains, which happens to be the part of the grain where the starch is most concentrated and thus tastes better. This means of course, that the more you polish, the more useless scraps of rice you have, resulting in delicious, but expensive sake.
There are three terms that indicate how much polished the rice is: Junmai: with 70% or less of the rice is polished away Ginjō, with 60% or less and Daiginjō, with under 50% of the rice is polished away.