The Craft Brewers Conference, held recently in Nashville, Tennessee, was an unexpected venue to be reflecting on the world of sake. It’s a yearly event designed primarily for the craft beer industry. It draws over ten thousand professionals from around the world and is held in conjunction with the World Beer Cup, a kind of Olympics for beer that is very competitive. How did thoughts of sake float to mind at such a gathering?
As some know, we also publish the Japan Beer Times, a quarterly, bilingual magazine mostly about the craft beer industry in Japan. This publication led us to sake because many of Japan’s veteran craft breweries from the last twenty years or so are also sake breweries. They branched into beer seeking an extra revenue source, especially during the summer. We’ve even featured some of those breweries in Sake Today, among them Kiuchi Shuzō (ST23), Kumazawa Shuzō (ST26), and, as a more recent entrant to craft beer production, Heiwa Shuzō (ST14). These three breweries, incidentally, have also won coveted medals at the World Beer Cup, proving that they’ve been able to translate their excellence in sake production into beer production as well. On our assignments to beer breweries, we often found ourselves enjoying sake, too. The beer and sake worlds in Japan are not so far apart; in many cases they are in fact joined at the root.
Among the thousands of American craft beer breweries, more than a few branched into other beverages, hard seltzer being a popular one of recent years, though hard kombucha, cider, and mead are others. Sake? Surprisingly, no, even as America boasts about two dozen craft sake breweries. Still, the interest is clearly growing.
In ST30, I wrote about the profusion of sake-beer hybrids, and that trend continues. I heard from a few World Beer Cup judges that they had encountered beers with some kind of sake component, usually sake yeast, but sometimes sake rice or even kōji. And in visiting the exhibitor booths for the yeast producers, I noticed that several of them offered sake yeasts. They told me that they started carrying these because they were receiving a lot of inquiries from brewers. To make sake-beer hybrids? Probably, but we don’t know. Maybe some are experimenting with sake brewing…
My name tag indicated I was with the Japan Beer Times. Many attendees, on seeing this, told me they were planning to visit Japan. Most wanted to know about the sake industry–what to drink and where, which breweries to visit, etc. I had a stack of Sake Today in my backpack for such moments, much to their delight.
While in Nashville, I visited Proper Sake, a craft sake brewpub run by Byron Stithem. His new place was bustling. He was hosting a collaboration event that night with a company in Japan that provides sake raw materials. There were several sake-beer hybrids on the menu using kōji, in addition to his sake. That night, I happened to be with Anderson Valley Brewing Company’s Fal Allen, one of the most respected brewers in America. He was fascinated by Stithem’s hybrids. My guess is that Allen is going to brew some of these on his own. Sake, too? Probably not but his hybrids could inspire others to give sake additional thought.
Stithem’s brewpub also demonstrated the potential for a new model in America and elsewhere. He was serving craft beer along with sake. Andrew Centofane of North American Sake Brewery (ST34) has been doing the same. It’s common to see bars devote a tap handle or two to another beverage like cider. Could sake have its day?
In this issue, our feature interview with Hideo Tadokoro touches on the topic of draft sake. This past February, we co-hosted an event with him at his Yokohama-based sake restaurant that offered several varieties of draft sake, among them Kawatsuru (ST27). It was a boisterous event well attended by Japanese and international residents alike. There’s definitely demand.
The potential for the two industries to spill more into each other is growing. The interest in sake from the beer side is there. Retailers are looking for an alternative beverage or two to differentiate themselves. And the availability of draft sake could be a difference maker. The party we co-hosted almost certainly won’t be the last of its kind.
