Kasumi Club is a free sake tasting club in Washington, D.C. Jacob introduces each bottle with its brewer's story, then the room tastes it and scores it out of 5. Every bottle we pour gets a page on this site with its score, whether it wins or not.
Glover Park. Somebody always brings a Polaroid camera and nobody ever remembers to use their phone.
Most of the interesting sake arriving in America goes to restaurants in New York and Los Angeles, or to distributors moving it by the pallet. What is left for a D.C. shelf is the safe middle of the category. We go looking past it, by writing to breweries and importers and asking for the bottle they are proudest of.
What lands in front of you on a given night ranges from a bottle any shop here can order to things that took a month of letters to get hold of. Undiluted sake straight off the press, unpasteurized bottles that rarely survive a normal supply chain, and starters that take four weeks instead of two all turn up. Jacob tells the room what each one is and who brewed it before it is poured, because knowing how a bottle was made is half of what there is to learn.
The part people do not expect is how much you learn. You hear who made each bottle and how, you taste it, you argue about it with twenty or thirty other people, and by the end of the night you can name what you like and why. That is the thing you take home, and it works in any shop, in any city, for the rest of your life.
Kasumi means mist. We named the club after the cloudy nigori that nobody here will stop talking about.
Sake like this exists. Most of it never reaches a D.C. shelf, because shipping one case to one city is rarely worth a distributor's time.
Kasumi Club started in April 2026 with a few people who wanted better sake than this city sells. It runs out of an apartment in Glover Park that holds about twenty to thirty people. About thirty came to the last tasting, so there can be a wait before your first one.
You show up, you taste, and you score what is in front of you. Your score counts the same as everyone else's on your first night. Jacob Katz runs it. Most of the bottles are sent by the breweries and importers who make them and bring them in.
Same three steps every season, so you always know what you are walking into.
We write to family breweries in Japan, craft brewers in the United States, and importers who bring in bottles the big distributors skip. We ask what they are making this season and request a sample of the one they are proudest of.
Before each pour, Jacob tells the room what the bottle is and who brewed it, from the brewery's and importer's own sheets. Then everyone tastes it and scores it on overall impression, complexity, aroma and mouth feel, and the overall score out of 5 is what counts.
Win or lose, each bottle gets its own page on this site with its score, photos, the brewery, the rice and what the room said, and a link back to whoever made or sent it.
Scores out of 5, plus a page on each bottle: who brewed it, where, what rice, how far it was polished, and what the room made of it. Here is our first tasting, from June.
The lineup before the labels went in the bag, left to right in pour order.
Hananomai Katana · Hatsumago · Okunomatsu · Kurosawa · Murai Family · Momokawa Pearl
A nigori from Oregon won. Momokawa Pearl is brewed by SakéOne in Forest Grove, and it beat four Japanese breweries. It also finished ahead of a kimoto from Nagano made with a four week starter that only about one in ten Japanese breweries still uses.
That first tasting was poured blind, with the labels in a bag, so nobody knew what they were drinking while they scored it.
Scored out of 5 by the members present, June 12, 2026, in Glover Park. Bar length shows the overall score. One night is one night, and two of these scores are still argued about inside the club.
Four of them come up constantly, on menus and on back labels. Learn these and you can order well in any shop, in any city.
Nigori is the cloudy one. It gets pressed through a loose mesh, so some of the rice solids stay in the bottle, and what you are handed ranges from barely hazy to thick and white. Good nigori has enough acidity to keep the sweetness moving instead of sitting on your tongue.
Namazake is unpasteurized. Skipping the heat leaves it bright and sometimes lightly fizzy, because the fermentation has not fully stopped, and you taste that in the first sip. Most of it is gone by early summer, which is why people chase it.
Kimoto and yamahai are two old ways of starting fermentation, and they take four weeks instead of two, which lets wild microbes get involved early. Kimoto comes out rounder and more savory, while yamahai comes out gamey and strange enough that you will either love it or pass the glass to your neighbor. About one in ten Japanese breweries still makes either one.
Muroka genshu is undiluted, straight from the press at its natural 17 to 20 percent. Most sake gets filtered through charcoal and cut with water before bottling, and this one skips both steps, so you get the full color, body and strength the brewer built into it.
Getting into a new American market usually means convincing a distributor to gamble on you before a single person has tasted the sake. We work the other way around. Send a sample and Jacob introduces it, with your story, to a room of twenty to thirty people who drink seriously and remember what they liked. Then the room scores it out of 5.
You get two things back. An honest score from a room that heard your story and then made up its own mind. And a written page on this site about your bottle either way, covering the brewery, the rice, the method and what the room said, which is a real page on the open web with your name on it.
A free sake tasting club in Washington, D.C., running since April 2026 in an apartment in Glover Park. Jacob introduces each bottle with its brewer's story, then the room tastes it and scores it out of 5, and every bottle gets its own page on this site, win or lose. About a hundred people are on the invite list, and about thirty came to the last tasting.
Nothing. Joining is free, and nothing is for sale at a tasting.
No. Every bottle is introduced before anyone drinks it, with what it is and who brewed it, so nobody needs to arrive knowing anything. A first-night score counts the same as everyone else's.
Everyone in the room scores each bottle on overall impression, complexity, aroma and mouth feel, and the published figure is the overall score out of 5, averaged across the room. One night is one night, so a disputed score gets argued about in the open and written up on the bottle's page.
Yes. Jacob introduces each sample to the room with its brewer's story, the room scores it out of 5, and every bottle poured gets a page on this site with its score whether it wins or not. Write to jacob@kasumiclub.com.
No. Kasumi Club is a tasting club, not a licensed retailer. It does not sell, buy or order sake.
Fill this out and you go on the list for the next one. Drinkers, breweries and importers all use the same form, and Jacob answers it himself.
Or email jacob@kasumiclub.com directly.