Sake Brewery Study – Visiting Niizawa Brewery in Miyagi
Last month I visited 10 sake breweries in Japan on the heels of Mei and KJ’s trips doing the same. We were gathering some good intel for our customers and you fine readers of the True Sake Newsletter. First and foremost, EVERY sake brewery is awesome! I’ll say it again, every sake brewery is awesome, and there are no two exactly alike. They are all different, unique, and awesome!
I’ve been doing this for a very long time, and things have certainly changed over the past two decades. In the beginning of my adventures, brewers didn’t want ANYBODY in the breweries, as outsiders represented bacteria; yes even family members. Visitors were a disruption and contamination, and what about those international white boys? We were the absolute worst-case scenarios! And that is why those initial breweries will always have a special place in my sake heart as they not only let me in, in some cases they let me work there (Ha! Even without my shirt on in the koji rooms).
Fast-forward to over 120 sake breweries later, I can safely say that things have changed for the better and for the worse. Now sake brewers like visitors to a certain degree, but they are now learning moderation. The current younger-owner generation sees the global merit of allowing their end-users to come and make a real bond with their brewery and brands. It’s a powerful communicator of sake, especially when each visit results in life-long fans and customers of their sake. But, too much of a good thing also has its consequences, and many breweries are finding their tipping point of too many visitors. It’s a balance. And now even the most devoted sake enthusiasts or professionals are having trouble getting into some breweries.
To get into Niizawa Sake Brewery, home of Hakurakusei, Super 7, and Absolute Zero, I had to ask a favor of another sake brewery owner in Miyagi to arrange a visit. And so I did, and so I visited those hallowed grounds. Side note: The rice polishing machines that are legendary in the industry for polishing/milling rice to below 0% are located near the old brewery and I didn’t get to see those – even though they look just like standard two story tall milling machines.
First and foremost, there are two legends that work with the 40 total kurabito at Niizawa. The first is Niizawa-Shacho himself, Mr. Iwao Niizawa, who looks like a sake brewery owner that is obsessed with quality and his own mission of making sake. He is one focused individual, and it almost overwhelmed his sense of humor and fun teamwork style. He is also a cool dude! In fact he is so cool, he hired a female toji at the age of 22 to execute his dream of making the most pure and perhaps most expensive sake in the history of sake.
Nanami Watanabe is a superstar in the sake world, and when most folks visit or want to learn about Niizawa sake they want to meet her (I did!). And that speaks volumes about the owner of the brewery! He is comfortable in his own skin, and that is why this sake brewery is literally kicking ass in the sake world. I immediately liked them both. And I immediately could tell that they had their own language that revolved around brewing passion and setting new goals and getting there. They are both so driven and that filters down to the team.
There are a total of 40 workers with 14 dedicated to brewing sake, of which 50% are women, and the average age is 35. It’s a young team, and they rock for 11 months out of the year with one month off to clean the brewery extensively. They make 3,500 koku of sake, which is not huge and not small, using 150-180 tanks of sake each season. Niizawa has 6 milling machines (where the magic happens), two steamers, and only one Yabuta (pressing) machine where they press it all. The brewery mainly uses 4 rice varieties from Miyagi (including Kura No Hana and Hitomebore table rice for the summer sakes) and two types of Hyogo-based Yamadanishiki. And what type of yeast works with rice polished to 7% and far less? You guessed it! Niizawa uses their own house yeast, which after begging I learned was based on Kanazawa Yeast #14. “But it is totally different.” Yes, I beg for information.
In 2011 Niizawa-san bought an existing brewing site in the mountains of Miyagi, and that is what I toured. He also bought the mountain above the brewery. Say what? Yup! He literally bought all the land up behind the brewery (the mountain). Why? You guessed it again, to protect and safeguard their water supply! How cool is that? They describe their water as, “Neutral – not soft and not hard, just neutral.” Mount Zao totally impressed me, but what really impressed me was their koji making process and their amazing ability to make sake drink the same in Nagano Japan and Northern California. Again, I will type, “What?”
Niizawa-Shacho is a visionary when it comes to sake, because he totally gets it! He gets that their sake drinks differently outside of their brewery. So, with that knowledge he turned to Watanabe-Toji and asked Nanami to make their Hakurakusei sake taste the same wherever they sell it. That’s just freaky and freakin’ awesome. This is truly some of the smartest brewing that I have ever experienced, and when she said that in Nagano, their food requires a sweeter sake and that they keep more glucose in their Hakurakusei formula for Nagano, I simply said, “Of course you did.” But me being me, and a HUGE fighter for all things International sake I asked, “How do you make sake for America taste like Hakurakusei in Miyagi?” And of course I eventually said, “Of course you did.”
Get ready to get your sake mind blown! The team at Niizawa makes sake taste the same as Miyagi Hakurakusei in the US by… wait for it, by making crunchy koji. What? Instead of soft and pliable koji, they make it very firm and almost crunchy! Why? It allows the sake to develop in the bottle for those longer distance markets. That’s crazy!
They store the finished product at very cold temperatures until they release it! (That’s why we sell Hakurakusei from our fridges). They bottle within 5 days of pressing, they store 3-4 months for the Japanese market, and less for the European market, and even less for the US market. They have invented a formula of time and temperature versus development in the bottle, which they use to maintain consistency and taste in their products. Of course.
In 2020, Niizawa shipped 5-6% of their sake overseas. Today, that number is 10% for international sales, and they want to double that in the next several years. Hong Kong is their “largest market” but I don’t think that is volume based. They sell a lot of the very high-priced Absolute Zero and Zankyo 7 to Hong Kong, but I promised that the US will one day be their largest market based on real sake exports of Hakurakusei. So let’s go!
Lastly, I wanted to give a shout out to Toi Yamagishi of Niizawa Brewery, who did the majority of the translating for me, and is a True Sake Newsletter reader. He is also the one to divulge the juicy details about the milling machines, like they have 2 flat polishing machines and 4 rounds, they mill Super 7 in April and May, Absolute Zero in February and March, and it takes 1-2 months for the rice to cool and acclimate/condition. He also said that when you super mill there is not enough food for the yeast to eat, which is very tricky, and it also takes 7 months to mill 100% rice down to less than 0%. Of course.
For the next few months of True Sake Newsletters, I will describe the ten sake breweries that I visited and I encourage you to try some of the products made in these breweries. And yes, I would encourage you to try Hakurakusei, which as you now know was made just for you! (Of course.)