Himonoya Sake Brewery (Nihonmatsu)

The Vathouse. A Worker Brings a Bag of Steamed-Rice Nihonmatsu, Fukushima prefecture, Japan.
Sake brewing, even for a Western wine amateur with a taste for learning the hows & whys of vinification, is mostly unchartered territory : blame the distance of Japan from our Western shores, the apparent remoteness of its breweries even from Tokyo, or the language and cultural barrier, this all makes sake making something that we may have heard about but rarely have the chance to witness firsthand. Thanks to the help of friends in Japan we had this rare opportunity to get a close look at this mysterious and ancient Japanese tradition. I'll not pretend that I understand now fully the whole of the sake-making process but the pieces of the puzzle begin to fit together, making a clearer picture appear.
This story takes place in the small town of Nihonmatsu, North of Tokyo. We reached the place the previous day after taking a train from Ikebukuro to Omiya, then a Shikansen to Koriyama and lastly a local train to Nihonmatsu. The sake gods were with us and the snow began to fall exactly a few hours before we arrived in this mountainous region [pic on left].
This brewery still works on a very traditional and artisanal manner, and it also keeps making its sake in the winter season only, like it used to be the rule for centuries in Japan. Let's remind that during the other seasons it was not possible in these non-airconditionned times to brew and keep sake safely. The sake of the Himonoya brewery is sold locally only and it is probably a typical example of the authentic artisanal sakes which stay under the radar for the world- or even the Tokyo consumer, and that you can only discover when you wander in the villages and small towns of Japan

Taking Out the Steamed RiceThe manager of the brewery, Mr Kagawa Keiji led us through the facility in the morning, as artisanal sake-making needs precisely-timed operations with lots of manual work, many of them being performed in the morning only.
A sake brewery looks a lot like a winery, there are vats, water pipes and presses, a bottling line (artisanal or automated), but the whole process is very different. Just think : instead of grapes, rice is the ingredient, and if that was not enough, it is patiently milled until it looses 30% to 70% of its original volume so that the fermentation can work easier inside the kernel. Then, while the grape already hold the water that the vines sipped through the roots from the subsoil, for the sake, water has to be added from scratch and its quality must be well appreciated because it will make 80% of the final product...To learn more, check this esake.com page, or also John Gauntner's excellent sake-world.com. We wanted to meet john Gauntner near Tokyo but couldn't alas find the time to visit him. We arrive as workers are emptying a vat full of steamed rice on a treadmill with a shovel [pic above], then loading it into sacks and bringing it to the vat room where they unload it into a vat for the fermentation [pic on top]. I show you different operations as they were showed to us, but the order is different.

Another vat room at Himonoya

The rice-milling Toji

this man plays a very important role for the making of the future sake : he is the rice-mill Toji, he is the one who overlooks the correct milling of the rice so that the right proportion of the outer shell of the rice is peeled out. This will allow a sperior type of fermentation and a premium sake. He must be I guess an expert on rice and on the biological aspects of this process. The mill looks like a very modest workshop where there's lots of dust, and it is hard to think that the great sakes are born during this very operation, right here in the dust and the noise...

Bags of rice waiting for their fate

The Sake-Maker in Chief : the TojiHere is the most important man in a sake brewery : the Toji. He is the equivalent of the winemaker, the one who oversees and coordinates all the complicated tasks that will result in the sake as we know it. What you see on the front/right is the steamer, which is now covered with a wooden lid. This is the artisanal way to steam rice : the rice, which has been first stripped of 30% to 70% of its outer shell (depending of the desired quality of sake) is poured into a pot called a koshiki, and this pot is brought on the top of the steamer with the two wooden rails that you can see on both sides of the steamer. The steam with flow upwards through the rice for a certain number of minutes through a central hole under the koshiki and thus prepare the rice for an easier fermentation, paving the way for the sake mold that will begin the fermentation in the vats, during the following stage [pic on top]. This painstaking steaming batch after batch has been replaced in large breweries by automated systems, but this ancient way remains a staple of small, artisanal sake breweries all over Japan. Filling containers to wash the rice bags

Moving the bags swiftly to rinse the rice

Taking the bags out at once

Second individual rinsing Rinsing in a large container

The Koji Man (Koji is the Mold Powder)This man is overlooking the ardous task of preparing the mold culture that will be sprinkled over the rice for the fermentation. The mold is a thin powder and it is sprinkled on small amounts of steamed rice to have the fermentation begin. It will take several hours under the regular checks and mixing by the expert in charge. At the end, the rice and its mold culture will be poured in a vat of steamed rice and mixed with water. The Koji man works in a special room because the mold culture is very sensitive to airborne bacteria and even breath. For example, the day before, we had a great Japanese dinner in a local restaurant in Nihonmatsu and decided not to eat the Natto (a strange dish which tastes like smelly cheese and is made from rotten beans) because we knew (and were advised) that it is better not to eat Natto or even cheese before visiting a sake brewery. The mold culture could suffer from unwanted bacteria if your breath still carries their germs. Some sake breweries even refuse access to this Koji room, partly also because each winery has its own well-kept secrets about how it manages the mold culture.The Yeast Starter (Shubo) ManThe yeast starter is another preparation (sake is a unique type of fermented beverage) which made in still another room [pic on left]. In this particular brewery, it was upstairs, in a room located above the vats. When the preparation was ready, they had small openings through which they could let the mix flow to the desired vat by gravity. This yeast starter is made of kojo, steamed rice, water and additional yeasts [pic on right], like here a #701 local yeast. There's another man who follows carefully the evolution of the mix and has to make timely decisions. Any error or delay in one of these crucial operations will result in undesired aromas or flaws in the sake, and it takes each of these experienced masters, plus the Toji to make a good sake. It's like if in a winery there were 3 enologists at the same time, and I haven't yet said anything about the man overlooking the milling of the rice... For this stage, the temperature being sensitive, the man shows us how he regulates the temperature : he put a long topless metal cylinder in the mix, and inserts a sealed cylinder filled with cold- or hot water in the first one for a certain time. In the recent years, the yeasts have been thoroughly scientifically studied and a selection of optimal strains have been produced. Each region and type of rice goes with specific types of yeasts that have been proved over the years to produce the best results in terms of flavor and mouthfeel.The Fune : the Sake PressWhat you see here has disappeared from all the modern sake breweries and you have to go to local, artisanal breweries to see a fune still in use. This is the press where the bags of fermented rice are piled up and pressed together. This traditional way to extract the sake needs a lot of manual work, to fill the bags, put them in the fune bed and take the bags out and empty them, but while the modern machines do press the rice very well too, many experts say that the best sake is pressed with such a fune. These two funes have been built around 1960.Gluing the LabelsThis is a cold winter day in this part of Japan and these two women are sitting near a portable stove with the bottling line in the background. they glue the labels manually, repeating a centuries-old ritual. the bottles are the traditional 1,8 liter ones that are seen all over Japan. Mr Kawada, the manager of the Himonoya sake brewery employs 12 people, but the brewery is working only in the winter months. This artisanal sake brewery has quite a wide range of sakes, including fragile, non-pasteurized ones which must be stored in 4° C cool fridges [pic on left].
This story is not finished and more things must be said, particularly on water and rice.
Thank you to Terumi, Haruko, Akiyo and to the lady in Nihonmatsu who coordinated this visit and later ones, and of course to B. whose fluent Japanese helped a lot.
We bought two bottles in this sake brewery and will give tasting notes soon.

Himonoya Sake BreweryNihonmatsuFukushima PrefectureFax : +81 (0)243 22 31 63

The Sugi Tama hanging at the door of the brewery

Comments

[hikalu]

looks interesting. I went to a sake chai last Sunday, and saw a wooden pot, not metal. He told me that there are less people using and making a wooden pot to steam rice in Sake breweries nowaday, but a wooden pot have several advantages. it can absorb extra moisture while steaming. Thank you for the interesting report.