Falling in love with sake is easy to do. We all know that. And along with the honeymoon phase of falling in love comes the insatiable desire to learn more about sake. We read books, scour blogs, watch YouTube videos, and go to tastings. It’s a deep rabbit hole to go down as you find you can never learn too much about this amazing beverage.
As our desire to learn more about sake grows, how it’s made and what makes it so interesting does as well. The logical progression for many is to consider the idea of making sake oneself. You might even ponder, “Could I make it as a sake brewer? Do I have what it takes?”
For me, the answer is “no”. My passion for learning about sake taps out at the thought of waking up at 4am to head into a freezing cold brewery to start my day by washing rice in icy cold water or carrying buckets of steamed rice up a rickety, 150-year-old, narrow, wooden staircase in a pair of ill-fitting rubber boots. No, I’m just fine where I am, thank you. I have nothing but the utmost respect for those that head down the path to hands-on sake brewing, but it isn’t for me. Of course, that’s not to say I’m not interested in how it’s done. On the contrary, I love the idea of “learning by doing”, but the fact is the vast majority of breweries are not set up for brewing experiences. Issues such as workplace safety, accessibility, and time pressures make such experiences difficult for most breweries to offer. However as sake continues to reach new audiences, the curiosity of its fans is rising and a handful of breweries are stepping forward to meet the challenge.
Sekiya Jōzō is one such brewery that has made great strides in bringing sake fans behind the curtain to see how the sausage is made, so to speak. Most recently, the brewery, which is best known for its highly popular Houraisen label, has begun offering simple, yet educational experiences in basic brewing practices for anyone at the new Houraisen Sake Laboratory.
The project came about after executive director Takeshi Sekiya was approached by his local town council regarding plans to construct a michi no eki (literally: roadside station) for the Shitara area, not far from where Sekiya Jōzō’s main brewery and office is located in Aichi prefecture. For those unfamiliar, a michi no eki is a hybrid of rest stop, souvenir shop, diner, and farmers market all rolled into one location. They are found in rural towns all over Japan in various sizes ranging from just a small cabin to larger sites almost resembling mini shopping malls.
Shitara is a laid back town located in the northeast of the prefecture, almost bleeding into Nagano Prefecture.
Surrounded by gorgeous mountain ranges, the winter months turn the area into a life-size snow globe of powdery flakes that add a delicate touch of frosting to the looming peaks. What the area lacks in excitement it makes up for with a variety of craft stores, historic Tokugawa-era castle ruins, and some breathtakingly picturesque mountain scenery.
The timing for the Shitara Michi no Eki proposal was just right for Sekiya, as the brewery was beginning to feel a little overwhelmed at its small-batch brewing site, Ginjō Kōbō. This secondary brewery was constructed in 2004 with one of its purposes being to offer brewing experiences to visitors. The smaller scale and less automated brewing style at Ginjō Kōbō also made it ideal for training new staff learning the trade. Sekiya explains that all new brewers that join the company must cut their teeth at Ginjō Kōbō before they can work in the main brewery.
As well as handling some of the brewery’s small batch sake, Ginjō Kōbō also produces “order-made sake”. Basically, anyone that wishes to have sake made to their own specifications can place an order (of at least 100 bottles) and the fine hands at Ginjō Kōbō will put it together for them. So if you’ve always been of the idea that a sake made kimoto-style with Omachi rice milled to 65%, fermented with #18 yeast, brewed a little on the sweet side, unpasteurized, cut with water, and pressed with a little lees left in would be the perfect sake, dream no more! Have it made at Ginjō Kōbō and find out just how right or wrong you were.
This order-made sake system has proven almost too popular for the brewery as they are now pumping out almost 230 batches a year. Such a high-paced, intense workload also made it difficult to invite guests to come and experience brewing. This dilemma made the invitation from the city council to participate in the michi no eki concept all the more timely. With the opening of Michi no Eki Shitara in May 2021, Sekiya Jōzō has assumed a prominent presence by taking over the whole second floor of the premises with the Houraisen Sake Lab. Here the brewery offers visitors a simple, safe, and relaxed atmosphere in which they can learn about how sake is made, and also try their hand at some basic procedures.
It all starts in the classroom–and quite a realistic looking classroom it is. The room is decked out with traditional wooden desks, chairs, and a chalkboard, and decorated with all manner of science class paraphernalia and tools generously donated by the science department of a recently closed neighborhood school. Take your seat at one of the desks among the Van der Graaf generators and Bunsen burners and class begins. Your teacher is Takurō Imaizumi, a twelve-year veteran of Sekiya Jōzō, who starts by taking “students” through a detailed video and slide presentation on the history of the brewery and the sake making process.
Then it’s time to enter the “lab”. The experience basically covers the main parts of production, from washing the rice to pressing. Production of the all-important kōji is the only process that doesn’t take place on site. Space issues and also being situated above a farmer’s market/dining hall where all kinds of microorganisms and unwelcome yeast bacteria could potentially travel up and infect the precious “soul of sake” led to the decision to produce kōji offsite at the main brewery and transfer it to the Lab as needed.
On the day of my visit, Imaizumi and fellow brewer Shōta Sakura are preparing the first addition of rice and water to the yeast starter, a step known as hatsu-zoe, to get the brewing ball rolling. Depending on the day one visits, the brewing activity will vary. Thursday is for rice washing and the first addition of rice and water to the main moromi. Saturday sessions will involve the second addition (naka-zoe) and Sundays take on the final addition (tome-zoe). Pressing also usually takes place on Saturday and Sunday afternoons. Brewing experiences are not offered from Monday to Wednesday, however drop-in visitors may be able to take part in amazake production, which they also produce for the Michi no Eki Shitara (amazake being a traditional, non-alcoholic type of rice beverage produced using a similar process to that of nihonshu).
With boots, hairnet, gloves, and lab coat on, it’s time to make some sake. Having helped out before in other breweries, taking part in the brewing experience here is, by comparison, far less pressure. Often at breweries it can feel as though you are in the way or slowing the kurabito down. Here, the whole experience is catered to the visitor, so the pace at which you carry out the tasks is a little more relaxed. Imaizuimi points out that guests of all ages from university students to grandparents in their seventies and eighties have come along for the experience, and have been more than capable of handling the brewing tasks.
That’s not to say the work isn’t taken seriously. As we prepare to add water to the yeast starter, Imaizumi instructs me to measure out 11 liters of water into a bucket known as tameshi, which is then weighed on a scale. I deftly scoop water into the tameshi as the scale ticks up to 10.985 liters. Feeling rather proud of myself, I turn to Imaizumi, waiting for the next instruction. There is a short pause as he eyes the digital display on the scale before calmly advising, “That’s not 11 liters.” Here in the Sake Lab, attention to detail takes priority over stroking the guest’s ego. Good to know.
After topping up the last .015 liters of water and adding it to the starter mash in the moromi tank, we then add some prepped kōji rice as well and stir thoroughly. Due to the significantly smaller batch-size produced compared to standard breweries (around 100 bottles per batch), the manual labor is much easier on the back and far less intense than that of larger brewery setups. As we remove a batch of rice from the koshiki (steamer) quite easily by just lifting the canvas lining that holds the rice from the tank, I recall a previous experience at a brewery where I was required to shovel kilos upon kilos of rice out of a much larger koshiki while the intense steam vapors just about melted my face off. I then had to carry the rice in buckets all the way across the other side of the brewery. Here, as we transfer all the steamed rice a distance of about one meter in one swift move without breaking a sweat, I start to wonder if maybe I could make it as a brewer after all.
Next, Imaizumi carefully times me with a stopwatch as I wash some locally grown Chiyo Nishiki rice milled to 55% to prepare for Saturday’s naka-zoe. It’s a simple procedure of filling a small tub with water from the wall faucets, submerging the mesh baskets of rice and then thoroughly washing the rice by hand before pulling the rice from the tubs just as the timer beeps. “Goshi goshi, goshi goshi (scrub, scrub!),” Imaizumi encourages from the sidelines. But far from being stressful, or intense, the experience is actually quite fun and the relaxed pace allows Imaizumi to explain further details of brewing and the function of each step in the process as we go along.
After we progress through a sliding door, adorably small fermentation tanks holding previously prepared moromi line the adjoining fermentation room. This room also houses the pressing machine. All sake produced in the lab is pressed by fune. This is an old-school method where the fermented sake is transferred to around fifteen canvas sacks, which are then stacked on top of each other in the fune box and then pressed under intense pressure to squeeze the liquid sake off from the rice solids. Most breweries these days use a yabuta pressing machine where sake is pumped through hoses and then pressed through mesh panels in a large accordion-type apparatus. Sekiya explains that although this method is highly efficient, yabuta machines take up a lot of space and the automated process doesn’t offer much hands-on action for visitors, hence the fune style of pressing.
We head back to the previous room where the rice we steamed earlier is now ready to be removed from the koshiki, laid out on the canvas and spread out to cool down before finally adding it to the mash to complete our hatsu-zoe.
On that note, our experience is pretty much done. The student brewers then return to the “classroom” where they may design their own label for the sake they helped brew, which is sent to them roughly three weeks to a month after fermentation is complete. Delivery can be made to hotels if guests are traveling, and even international delivery can be arranged if necessary.
With my brewing experience complete, I’d worked up quite an appetite and headed downstairs to the dining hall for some lunch. The Seirei Shokudō (dining hall) offers a variety of lunch sets; however, I highly recommend the chicken and tomato spice curry made with sake kasu from the Sake Lab. It is rich, creamy, and laden with umami. In the adjoining market space, visitors can find all manner of local snacks, fresh produce, condiments, handcrafted toys, souvenirs, and, of course, fresh Shitara sake direct from the lab just upstairs. This sake can only be purchased at Michi no Eki Shitara (and perhaps a select number of places nearby if one looks hard enough).
Michi no Eki Shitara itself is easy to find and clearly signposted with an old train carriage displayed front and center as you drive in. The location is smack in the middle of what was once a railway line linking the area with Toyohashi City, a nearby major junction back in the days when Shitara boasted a thriving timber industry. Trains would ship timber along the line with just one carriage allocated to commuter travel. As overseas competition eventually put the timber industry out of business and more people began to use cars and buses, the line was finally put out of commission in 1965. It was actually Sekiya’s great grandfather who petitioned the council at the time to allow them to keep the commuter train carriage as a monument. Now it sits at the entrance to the roadside station serving as a landmark indicator to the brewery’s latest contribution to the community.
Michi no Eki Shitara also houses an exhibition hall, Okumikawa Kyōdokan. The hall features displays detailing the history and culture of Shitara, historical picture scrolls, the nature and wildlife of the region, and a large presentation of locally crafted clay hina dolls.
In the end, my brewing experience at Houraisen Sake Lab reinforced my original feelings that I’m not cut out to be a brewer. Sure, if all brewing was done on a scale as small as a place such as this, I might consider it. But I’m well aware of how brewing pressure and workload differs in the “real” world. Still, the experience offered by Sekiya Jōzō is a fantastic way to get up close and personal with some of the basic techniques involved in brewing and learn a little more about the brew we all love–without the pressure. If such experiences can bring more folks to sake and inspire some pride in the local sake scene, it will become quite a worthwhile endeavor for all involved.
