Fukushima's haccoba opens a brewery in Tokyo's Otemachi

A small brewery on the river where Edo’s food once arrived

haccoba is a craft sake brewery founded in Odaka, Fukushima Prefecture. In partnership with the major property developer Mitsubishi Estate, it has opened “haccoba Uchikanda Brewery” on the second floor of the Otemachi Gate Building, completed in July 2026 in the heart of Tokyo. The brewery opened in September 2026. It covers about 72.6 square metres and includes a food and drink area alongside the brewing space. On the banks of the Nihonbashi River, which the building faces, boats loaded with food arrived in the Edo period. The surrounding Kanda district is also where izakaya and soba culture grew up. In this place, one of the starting points of Japanese food culture, haccoba will now brew a new genre of drink. Craft sake is made on the foundation of sake-brewing methods, with ingredients such as fruit and herbs added partway through fermentation. Under Japan’s liquor tax law, it is classified not as “seishu (sake)” but as “other brewed alcoholic beverages”.

From a town once emptied of residents

haccoba opened its first brewery in February 2021. Odaka, where it is based, was a town whose residents fell to zero for a time after the evacuation following the 2011 nuclear accident. In 2023 it also opened a brewery in neighbouring Namie. haccoba’s motto is “making sake more freely”. Its hallmark is expressing, with a contemporary sensibility, the culture and recipes of “doburoku”, the cloudy sake once brewed in Japanese homes. It has also been involved in building local culture, starting a community festival and converting the building of an unstaffed railway station into a brewery. Local Fukushima financial institutions have supported this move into Tokyo with loans and investment. haccoba says it wants to share with the world the food culture of Fukushima that has been preserved even after the accident.

A laboratory linking the city and the regions

The new brewery is not just a place to make sake. It doubles as a laboratory and showroom for the “Meguru-meku Project”, which connects producers with city dwellers, and there are plans to hold brewing-experience programmes. Joint brewing with nearby companies and restaurants is also planned. In 2025, haccoba brewed an original sake expressing the brand philosophy of Mitsubishi Jisho Sekkei, together with OPENBOOK, a craft sake brewery in Tokyo.

If you come across craft sake in Europe, start by checking the label for the added ingredients. The pleasure lies in how the sweetness and umami of the base rice combine with the aromas of fruit and herbs. A wine glass will help you pick out the differences in aroma more easily than a small sake glass. haccoba aims to expand its bases beyond the prefecture and overseas. Having gained a big stage in Tokyo, it will be worth watching whether the day comes when its free-spirited sake lines the shelves of shops abroad.