Odori

【English】

Odori rest day, “dance”

【Japanese】

踊り

The day of rest following the shikomi (mashing) of the first soe stage is called odori. Mashing is suspended to allow yeast growth before the naka-zoe (second stage) is mashed the following day. The appearance of the odori is an indicator of the state of yeast growth, and so an important criterion for predicting the course of the later fermentation. The usual composition of the odori (measured thirty hours after mashing) is: 10-11 Baumé and 2.5-3.5 acidity.

In cases where two batches’ worth has been mashed together, the mash is divided in half before mashing the second stage. This is called naka wake or odori wake. The reason for mashing two batches’ worth at once is that, when mashing only for a single batch, odori temperature does not always rise satisfactorily, so that yeast growth is not fast enough. However, nowadays it is easy to control temperature, so it is common to mash each batch separately in different tanks to begin with, without using a separate tank just for soe (and odori). This economizes on the labour of dividing the batch, and is known as suppon-jikomi.

In the case of shubo where the karashi conditioning period has been too long, it may not be possible to reach the desired condition and appearance because of slowed yeast growth. In this case, it may be necessary to delay mashing for an extra day to facilitate yeast growth; this is called “two-day odori” (futsu-ka odori).