Hybrid Saison/Sake brew?

A few weeks back, I was at a local bar where Goose Island happened to be premiering a special brew they made ("Kisetsu") that was a surprisngly good saison/sake hybrid. The brewmasters were there, and gave a quick overview of how they made the beer: essentially brewing a saison, then doing secondary where they fermented a sake.

I thought it might be a fun project to try to recreate, but I'm still a bit new to brewing. I've done probably 4-6 extracts and 1 all-grain (BIAB). I think I'm comfortable enough to handle the saison, but I'm kind of at a loss for the sake secondary. Can anyone give me any suggestions? I talked to my local brew shop, and they have sake yeast in stock, and suggested using adding a rice extract to my fermenter in the secondary stage.

Right now, I'm kind of thinking something along these lines:

1. Brew an all-grain saison in my 5 gallon fermenter. I'm aiming for 5 gal of finished product, so I'd need to leave space to add more sugars here.
2. After primary fermentation ends, add diluted rice extract to 6 gallon fermenter, rack over saison, and pitch sake yeast.

Questions:

1. From my understanding, Koji is used to help unlock the sugars from rice for fermentation. Would using an extract here acheive the same result? Am I totally barking up the wrong tree flavor-wise? This is an experiment, so I'm kind of trying to balance ease and flavor.
2. Any ideas on how I would calculate how much extract I need for the secondary fermentation to end up with a final product of about 5 gallons?

Oh, and my fermentation space is in my basement, with ambient temps in the mid 60s. Thanks in advance for any insight you guys might be able to give!

This is an interesting idea but I think if you just go the rice extract you will be going in a completely opposing flavored profile from any real sake flavor. I would brew the saison and rack onto koji and cooked rice. Since there is going to be so much liquid there will be little need to do the rice in multiple additions like we do in sake. Probably just do one gallon batches worth of sake to flavor the saison. That should be 1 1/3 cups koji and 5 cups cooked rice. Also since there is so much liquid I would add 1 tsp amalyse enzyme per gallon to make sure there is enough enzymes there to break down the rice.

Then make sure to run the secondary fermentation cold. Probably give it 48 - 72 hours at room temp to start going and then move to a cooler and keep it really cool between 55*F and 60*F. After about 30 days it should be ready to rack again.

That's great advice, thanks! Just a few more questions: Would you suggest doing my full 5 gallon target for the saison during my primary stage, then rack that right onto the rice? (In that case making 5 tsp of amalyse?)

Oh, and one question on technique: is it better rack onto rice, or add the rice into the beer after it's racked?

I would shoot for the full five gallon and rack onto the cooked rice and koji.

Now I totally forgot about this but here is another way you can do it. A couple weeks before starting your saison start making a traditional Sake. The process takes about 30 days but one of the later steps you strain the sake through cheese cloth and there is a lot of semi solid mass composed of partially converted rice & loads of the enzymes and yeast in your Sake. Just rack your saison on top of that with an additional 5 tsp of amalyse enzyme. That should impart the sake flavors well and you get to try some sake side by side with this hybrid.

I am actually doing that with a mead right now. I did it more out of laziness in that I did not want to run to the LHBS to pick up my normal mead yeast which I am out of. I just mixed in 50 grams of sake lees I had saved in the fridge with my 1 gallon mead must. Sake lees keeps a long time in the fridge. This puts more work into the project but I wanted to bring it up as a viable option to make this work.

OK. I think I'm going to start my saison this sunday. The traditional sake route sounds pretty interesting, but is probably a bit more involved than I can handle right now (in both time and expertise, haha). I've realized that my big stumbling block is that I just don't know enough about the process of making sake, in general. I've been trying to educate myself, but if you have any links you could suggest for a beginner, that would be awesome.

Right now, I'm thinking I'll try your original suggestion with cooked rice and koji, plus amylase. I was thinking about getting dried koji. Do i need to rehydrate that beforehand? What's appropriate for that process? Oh, and are those units (1.33 cups koji, 5 cups cooked rice) dried or hydrated volumes? And finally, would I just add the amylase powder right to the racked rice and saison, or do I need to do a mashing process with the rice+amylase?

I know that's a ton of questions, and I've got to thank you for all the patience and help you've shown already!

The volumes for the rice are measured dry. The dry koji can be rehydrated over night in the fridge with just enough cold water to cover the top. Should take about 8 hours to be hydrated properly. In all my sake steps I like cold and slow. Just add the amalyse strait to the rice right before you rack the saison on it. In Sake they do not do cooked mashes at all and the amalyse process works at cold temps.

hi this is gonna be my next beer just a couple of questions when making the saison did you pitch sake yeast or just a saison yeast ? did you add any hops to bring it in line with traditional sake ? and what was the fg before bottling ? thank in advance