Hakutsuru's 37 m² micro-brewery makes its first light, dry sake with its 21st release

Hakutsuru Shuzo, based in Kobe, Hyogo Prefecture, is one of Japan’s leading major sake producers. Inside the company’s Hakutsuru Sake Brewery Museum (Higashinada Ward, Kobe) sits a small brewery, HAKUTSURU SAKE CRAFT, which began full operation in September 2024. It covers just 37 square metres. The room has equipment for every stage in one place: washing the rice, steaming, koji making, fermentation, pressing, filtering and bottling. Two people, the toji (head brewer) and a kurabito (brewery worker), lead the work, brewing with 100 kg of rice per batch. For a large producer built on mass production, it is something like an in-house laboratory.

Deliberately heading in the opposite direction to sweet sake

The previous 20 releases mostly centred on rich, sweet sake with plenty of aroma and sweetness, aimed at younger people, women and visitors from abroad. Mitsuhiro Ban (62), the toji behind the new “No.21 Junmai Daiginjo Tanrei Karakuchi” (light, dry), believes that consumers’ tastes today lean towards full-bodied, sweet sake rather than light, dry sake. He chose to go against the current all the same. His inspiration was a tanka poem by Kinichiro Sakaguchi, the brewing scientist known as the “Sake Doctor”. It expresses a wish to write a poem like sake that passes down the throat without catching, flowing like water. Ban respects Sakaguchi as a fellow technologist.

Balancing “sake like water” with “sake character”

The difficulty is that the further you push lightness, the more the distinctive sake flavour fades, while the more of that character you keep, the further you move from a water-like feel. So, although it is called “light and dry”, the brewers did not aim for an extreme dryness. They designed a medium-dry to medium taste that keeps as much aroma as possible. They chose a combination of ginjo yeast and fermentation method to suit this, and because they found that summer koji turns out differently from winter koji, they also switched to a koji mould different from the usual one. The rice is 100% Hakutsuru Nishiki, a sake rice developed in-house, polished to a seimaibuai of 50%. A seimaibuai of 50% means that half of each grain has been polished away from the outside. Junmai daiginjo is the top category, brewed with only highly polished rice and no added brewing alcohol. It costs 7,700 yen (tax included) for 720 ml, limited to 294 bottles, and went on sale on 12 September. Ban says he is satisfied with the result, but leaves it to drinkers to judge whether it has a water-like smoothness.

What European readers should note

With only 294 bottles, getting hold of this particular sake will be difficult. Even so, there are points worth noting. Hakutsuru has said it intends to use the sake styles that prove popular in future product development, so the results of this experiment may eventually show up in its standard products. The story is also a good way into one of the main axes of sake flavour, “tanrei” (light) versus “nojun” (rich). When choosing sake, look at labels such as “tanrei karakuchi” (light and dry) and “nojun amakuchi” (rich and sweet), and try tasting both types chilled in wine glasses. Pair the lighter sake with delicate dishes such as oysters and white fish, and the richer one with cheese or grilled meat, and the difference becomes clear.