Challenged by Covid-19, Sake Makers Turn to Distilling Spirits
I’m back from my book-writing hiatus and ready to resume this blog. It’s going to be a while before our book on Japanese craft sake culture comes out, but we’re excited at the prospect of sharing it when it does.
Today’s post is about the small number of sake makers, who—spurred by the economic challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic and a growing interest in sustainability—have begun to distill gin using sake or beer byproducts. It’s a subject tailor-made for me since it combines my interests in sake, sustainability and craft spirits. And it’s a trend that you will see grow as sake makers try to diversify into the lucrative and rapidly expanding craft spirits industry.
In September, Tokyo sake retailer Yuya Yamamoto came up with the idea of helping revive the hard-hit sake industry by using sake lees to distill gin. His Ethical Spirits & Co. brought together two well-known breweries, Miyasaka Brewery (makers of the Masumi brand of sake) in Nagano Prefecture and Chiyomusubi in Tottori Prefecture to make “Last Episode 0” gin. Collaborative projects like these have grown in number during the Covid-19 crisis, part of a raft of creative products and marketing strategies designed to help breweries stay afloat.
The idea is that Masumi will supply its sake lees-based shochu, Sumi, which it’s been distilling since the 1980s, and Chiyomusubi will use it as the base spirit for the new gin. The two editions of the dry gin made so far, “Last Episode 0 Modest,” and “Last Episode 0 Elegant,” feature a combination of 13 different botanicals, says Chiyomusubi’s So Okasora, including juniper berry, five different citrus fruits (yuzu, the pomelo hybrid hassaku and bitter orange, among others), kuromoji (spicebush), angelica, and blueberry. All of them, he adds, are distilled separately before blending. The project is overseen by toji (master brewer/distiller) Shinichi Tsuboi. “Chiyomusubi has been making shochu for over thirty years,” Okasora explains, so its toji and brewery workers have mastered distillation techniques as well as sake brewing.
One of the attractions of the growing Japanese craft gin movement is its use of indigenous botanicals. The rice-based Ki no Bi, one of my favorites, uses Kyoto’s famous soft Fushimi water to distill a gin perfumed with the aromas of yuzu, hinoki wood chips, bamboo, gyokuro green tea and sansho peppercorn berries. It’s great simply cut with warm water, or, as my friend Melinda Joe has recommended, with a strip of Kyushu Sanpuku nori. And I’ve recently learned that Nikka Coffey gin, distilled with four kinds of Japanese citruses among other botanicals, is available at Ontario’s LCBO stores. Nara’s Yucho brewery has started Yamato Distillery, which makes a handsomely packaged gin called Kikka. It’s distilled using the ancient mandarin fruit tachibana and Yamato toki, an herb in the Angelica family.
Although Yuya Yamamoto has said that he was inspired to launch Ethical Gin when he heard about excess sake lees being discarded during the Covid-19 pandemic, this seems hard to believe to me, since brewers and Japanese in general have a mortal dislike of waste. And Masumi’s Katsuhiko Miyasaka confirms that at his brewery, no sake lees are discarded; instead, most are sold at local supermarkets for consumers to use for pickle making. Amazingly, it was Katsuhiko’s grandfather, Kazuhiro, who first decided decades ago that he wanted to install a still at the brewery and begin distilling shochu with sake lees.
In Iwate Prefecture, Nanbu Bijin president Kosuke Kuji announced in early October that in 2021 he will begin production of both craft gin and vodka. When the pandemic caused sales of his sake to fall 15%, he conceived of this plan as a way of using the excess rice resulting from reduced demand. “We were only able to use about half of the contract rice from 2019,” he said, “and we wanted to use all of the best rice from our farmers—we didn’t want to cause them meiwaku (trouble, bother),” after all of their hard work. Since his brewery had begun distilling rubbing alcohol to meet local demand for hand sanitizer, he already had the needed permit to distill spirits.
But Kuji’s distilling plan has more to it than just using up excess rice. It aims to harness the best natural products of his prefecture: urushi, or lacquer, and beech trees. He plans to become the first craft distiller in Japan to incorporate the bark of the lacquer tree, of which his home town of Ninohe happens to be the largest domestic producer. The birch trees of the 900-acre Hiraniwa prefectural forest park in neighboring Kuji city, meanwhile, are at the heart of a traditional kiln-fired charcoal business that once fueled households and stores across Japan. Now the effort to keep the kilns going and the forests healthy are part of the country’s Sustainable Development Goals; they supply charcoal for artisan blacksmiths, among others. Kuji will help both forests stay sustainable with his purchases of urushi bark for his gin and high-quality activated birch charcoal to filter his craft vodka.
Interestingly, sales manager Masaaki Hirano told me that Kuji has no plans to hire a special master distiller when the new distillery is completed. “We have people at the brewery who have technical skills that go beyond sake brewing,” he explains. The Nanbu toji guild, to which Nanbu Bijin’s master brewer Junji Matsumori belongs, is not revered throughout the country for nothing! Kuji plans to use the prefectural hybrid rice Gin Otome—which Matsumori understands well—for the base spirit of both his gin and vodka, and for the gin, up to 10 botanicals in total including lacquer bark. “The three things we’re the best at: urushi, birch charcoal and the Nanbu master brewers,” Kuji told the audience, will all come together in these new products. “They will have super-high value as Japanese craft items.” He plans to have these products on the market in Japan by March of 2021.
In Tokyo, the innovative Kiuchi Brewery responded to the glut of beer going unsold in Japanese bars and restaurants when the pandemic hit. In April, it put out a call to restaurant and bar owners to bring in their unsold beer to its Tokyo Distillery (located in the city’s Akihabara district), where it would be repurposed as “Save Beer Spirits Craft Gin.” The gin incorporates lemons, mikan (Satsuma mandarin) and sansho peppercorns.
Kiuchi’s Ibaraki Prefecture-based brewery brews its Kikusakari brand sake with locally grown Yamada Nishiki and Hyogo Prefecture-grown organic Yamada Nishiki. It also eschews commercial yeast for its own proprietary yeast. In 1996, the brewery launched the now-popular and ubiquitous line of Hitachino beer, so it has a history of innovative expansion that helps explain this nimble pandemic add-on project.
Although Covid-19 may have accelerated sake makers’ entry into craft distilling, it’s something that would have happened anyway. In the case of Nanbu Bijin, Hirano says that president Kuji has always been interested in distilling spirits; the crisis simply provided a good entry point and time. Okasora of Chiyomusubi says the same thing: The purpose of the project is to add value to sake lees and alcohol that can’t otherwise be disposed of, and production will continue after the pandemic ends.
He foresees more sake breweries getting into craft spirits, but notes, “It will not be easy for many sake brewers.” Not only is a license required, the business must make at least 6,000 liters a year to obtain that license.
Either way, I’m betting we’ll see more and more sake breweries adding craft spirits to their product lines in the future!
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