Taisuke Sato: Brewing the Finest Sake from Two Types of Chaos

haccoba -Craft Sake Brewery- produces sake based on a free brewing style similar to craft beer. Strictly speaking, it is not classified as "Nihonshu" (refined sake), but rather falls under the category of "Other Brewed Beverages."

To begin with, a license is required to produce alcohol in Japan. Furthermore, it is currently impossible for new players to obtain a license specifically for producing Nihonshu.

Therefore, there are two main ways to start a sake brewery in Japan. One is to take over an existing brewery through business succession. The other is to do what we do: "utilize a license other than for Nihonshu to create alcohol using sake-making methods."

The category of "Other Brewed Beverages" possesses a literal chaos that cannot be confined to specific types of alcohol.

While maintaining the traditional Japanese sake-making process using rice and koji, we add fruits and herbs during the fermentation process to enjoy differences in flavor and aroma. This raises the question, "Is that even sake?" but I actually believe it brings us closer to the origins of Japanese fermentation culture. In the past, before licenses were required for sake-making in Japan, households freely enjoyed making alcohol using various ingredients beyond just rice and koji. By pursuing the fermentation culture of that free era, we are chasing the romance of reaching the ultimate flavor.

The other "chaos" is the region where our brewery is based: Odaka Ward, Minamisoma City, Fukushima Prefecture. This is a town where the population temporarily dropped to zero due to evacuations following the nuclear accident caused by the Great East Japan Earthquake ten years ago.

In a town where daily life was suspended for several years, life and culture were reset. Now, the local residents are in the stage of carefully restarting their lives step by step.

A "town that became zero" is a chaotic situation, but from another perspective, it is a modern frontier where "we can pioneer the town we want to live in ourselves."

In such a town, we are taking on the challenge of starting a sake brewery—an institution that has shaped Japanese culture and aesthetics—from scratch.

I believe that sharing "supremely delicious sake" with a free brewing style from this land will serve as a catalyst for people around the world to feel closer to "fermentation culture" and "climate change and energy issues."