Lucy Thomas
From left to right, cofounders Brandon Floan, Justin LeVaughn and Joe Rice started The Void Sake Co. in the summer of 2021. The brewery’s offerings range from traditional sake styles to flavored varieties and sake seltzers.
Ethereal Brewing cofounder and brewer Brandon Floan remembers the first time he tried sake years ago via a “sake squirt” from the chef’s squeeze bottle into his mouth as Floan was dining at a hibachi restaurant.
“It didn’t resonate at that moment,” he said with a chuckle.
Sake resurfaced a few years ago when Ethereal hosted a Japanese cuisine-inspired beer event with sake served on the side. He also sampled some premium sake at a restaurant and began to appreciate the drink’s nuances, learning that quality sake is best served cold and slowly savored, rather than throwing it back shot style.
“It changed my mind on what sake is,” he said.
Floan aims to indoctrinate others in the vast spectrum of sake with The Void Sake Co., Kentucky’s first craft sake brewery, which he founded in the summer of 2021 along with Justin LeVaughn, chief science o.cer at Ethereal, and Joe Rice, an IT professional and craft-beverage enthusiast. While The Void Sake Co. is a separate business, Floan and LeVaughn are also still involved with Ethereal Brewing.
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Lucy Thomas
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Lucy Thomas
Floan and LeVaughn painstakingly craft each batch of sake from grain to glass in a small warehouse on the dead-end strip of National Avenue, which also includes a tasting room. In just a year, The Void Sake Co. has placed its four core varieties of sake in most major liquor stores throughout the region, including Liquor Barn and Total Wine locations, as well as at several restaurants in Lexington and Louisville, including School Sushi and Omakase Sushi and Sake Bar in Lexington. Tours, tastings and bottle sales are also offered onsite at the brewery.
Koji, a fungus that grows on rice and is unique to sake and other fermented Asian foods like soy sauce and miso, is essential to the brewing process. The Void imported spores from Japan and cultivates its koji at the brewery during an intensive 48-hour process in a temperature-controlled room where the rice is spread out over a traditional koji table and kept at a balmy 90 degrees.
Lucy Thomas
The Void Sake Co.’s products are available in its brewery and tasting room on National Avenue, as well as in liquor stores and select restaurants throughout the region.
LeVaughn typically spends the night at the brewery to keep watch, as temperature and humidity must be monitored closely during koji making.
More rice is polished, soaked and steamed to release starches and added to a portion of the koji to create a starter mash. The mash goes into open-top vessels made from repurposed Italian wine tanks. More koji, steamed rice and water are added in stages during the fermentation process. The mixture is stirred daily and resembles porridge the first week or two, eventually thickening into a grits-like liquid after three to four weeks.
The resulting sake is pressed, filtered, pasteurized and stored in a maturation tank for several weeks before blending and bottling. The Void Sake Co. makes eight different styles of sake, including Junmai, which Floan says is clear, more robust and fuller in the mouth, and Nigori, a cloudier, somewhat sweeter type that’s shaken before drinking and has a creamy mouthfeel. They also make sake seltzers and flavored varieties of Nigori sake including tangerine, vanilla and cold brew made with a custom blend from Nate’s Coffee.
The trio is always on the hunt for experimentation and collaboration, and has paired with West Sixth Brewing, Mirror Twin Brewing and a new sake company in Louisville to produce brewed beverages. They’re collaborating with their colleagues at Ethereal Brewing to brew a commemorative first-anniversary offering.
Floan said the business plan has always been to take on as little debt as possible and grow gradually. He’s also happy to report that operating the company is still fun.
“It really is,” he said. “I can tell you from my experience opening up Ethereal, there’s always going to be headaches, and there’s always going to be a tremendous amount of stress, but at the end of the day, you’re making a fun product” for people to enjoy.