Podcast

INTRO

In episode 65 of the Japan Distilled podcast, we discuss something that is often overlooked in discussions of distilled spirits production. What’s happening inside the pot still?

CREDITS

Theme Song: Begin Anywhere by Tomoko Miyata (http://tomokomiyata.net/)

Mixing and Editing: Rich Pav (https://www.uncannyrobotpodcast.com/)

HOSTS

CHRISTOPHER PELLEGRINI Vermont born and bred, long-time Tokyo resident and author of The Shochu Handbook, Christopher learned about delicious fermentations as a beer brewer at Otter Creek (Middlebury, VT). He now spends most of his waking hours convincing strangers that shochu and awamori are unlike anything they’ve ever tried before. 

STEPHEN LYMAN discovered Japan’s indigenous spirits at an izakaya in New York City. He was so enthralled that he now lives in Japan and works in a tiny craft shochu distillery every autumn. His first book, The Complete Guide to Japanese Drinks, was nominated for a 2020 James Beard Award.

Stephen and Christopher sometimes pretend to be chemists even though they are not.

If you have any comments or questions about this episode, please reach out to Stephen or Christopher via Twitter. We would love to hear from you. 

SHOW NOTES

The Pot Still

When it comes to distilled beverage alcohol, there are two primary still designs. The pot still and the column still. A column still is what’s used to turn crude oil into high-test gasoline and that’s about as much as you need to know about how its used to make beverage alcohol. Think vodka, soju, and most budget minded gins, rums, and whiskies.

The pot still is where things get interesting (and more expensive). The fermentation is boiled and evaporated out of the still one time for each run. In this batched process, the alcohol yields are lower, but much more interesting flavors and aromas are retained. Think Jamaican pot still rum, single malt Scotch, mezcal, and, of course, Honkaku Shochu and Ryukyu Awamori.

What’s Happening Inside the Pot Still?

This is where things get endlessly complex, confusing, and interesting. This is also where many people decide to just enjoy the beverages rather than understanding their production process in a deeper way. And that’s okay.

A fermentation, whether it be a “simple” rum molasses fermentation, a “beer” for whisky making, or a porridge-like sweet potato shochu fermentation, is a complex community of living organic matter, dead organic matter, liquids, solids, sugars, starches, proteins, fats, and myriad other things.

Each and every one of these things has a vapor point, or the temperature at which is will convert from liquid form to gaseous form. This is what will determine when that particular compound will escape through the neck of the pot still only to be re-liquified in a cooling apparatus to become part of the resulting spirit.

As you may recall from high school chemistry class, the boiling point (vapor point) for water is 100 degrees Celsius. For ethanol (the “goal” of beverage alcohol distillation), it is around 78.4 degrees Celsius. Therefore, to extract the spirit from the fermentation, you want the temperature inside the pot still to be somewhere between 78.4 and 100 degrees Celsius.

This is not to say that anywhere between those two temperatures is fine. It’s not. All of the other compounds inside the pot still will be evaporating or not depending on the temperature and this can change the flavor and aroma of a spirit in profound ways. And this is where the art comes in. The distiller who knows what she’s doing will optimize the temperature inside the still to capture the maximum ethanol yield in perfect harmony with the ideal flavor and aroma profile for what they are trying to make. That’s where the magic lies. Everything else is just chemistry.

Just Scratching the Surface

To learn more, check out the Moonshine Distiller website, which is chock full of some of the best English language descriptions about what’s happening inside the pot still.

Kanpai!

INTRO

In episode 63, Christopher Pellegrini takes the interviewer’s chair as he welcomes his friend and fellow Tokyo Swallows fan, Mac Salman of premier Japanese drinks youtube channel Kanpai Planet.

CREDITS

Theme Song: Begin Anywhere by Tomoko Miyata (http://tomokomiyata.net/)

Mixing and Editing: Rich Pav (https://www.uncannyrobotpodcast.com/)

HOST

CHRISTOPHER PELLEGRINI Vermont born and bred, long-time Tokyo resident and author of The Shochu Handbook, Christopher learned about delicious fermentations as a beer brewer at Otter Creek (Middlebury, VT). He now spends most of his waking hours convincing strangers that shochu and awamori are unlike anything they’ve ever tried before. 

Christopher and his guest, Mac, have been exploring Tokyo’s drinks scene for decades.

If you have any comments or questions about this episode, please reach out to Christopher or Mac via Twitter, or X or whatever they’re calling it these days. We would love to hear from you. 

SHOW NOTES

Mac Salman

Christopher’s longtime friend and constant Tokyo Swallows emotional support network member, Mac Salman, is originally from the UK, but moved to Japan to continue his career in banking. That’s all behind him now that he’s become a successful entrepreneur.

Maction Planet

Mac’s first independent business in Japan was founded in 2017 with the very popular Maction Planet tour agency. Mac provides bespoke tours throughout Japan and these tours are extremely popular. You need to book months in advance.

Of course, the pandemic required a big old pause button be pressed on that business so Mac, a tireless workaholic, created Kanpai Planet on YouTube.

Kanpai Planet

With over 60 very well made videos and 6,000+ YouTube channel subscribers, Kanpai Planet is absolutely the best Japanese beverage alcohol content available on YouTube. Sake, whisky, shochu, and much more. Such a great resource.

The 9 Part Making Sake on Sado is definitely a must watch as are his brand reviews for various Japanese whiskies. Our favorite, of course, is for Takamine 8 Year Koji Whiskey.

We highly recommend you subscribe to Kanpai Planet and if you find yourself in Tokyo on vacation, take one of Mac’s tours – just book well in advance.

Kanpai!

INTRO

In episode 62, our hosts dive into our 2nd ever shochu distillery profile. This one for Sanwa Shurui, makers of iichiko shochu.

CREDITS

Theme Song: Begin Anywhere by Tomoko Miyata (http://tomokomiyata.net/)

Mixing and Editing: Rich Pav (https://www.uncannyrobotpodcast.com/)

HOSTS

CHRISTOPHER PELLEGRINI Vermont born and bred, long-time Tokyo resident and author of The Shochu Handbook, Christopher learned about delicious fermentations as a beer brewer at Otter Creek (Middlebury, VT). He now spends most of his waking hours convincing strangers that shochu and awamori are unlike anything they’ve ever tried before. 

STEPHEN LYMAN discovered Japan’s indigenous spirits at an izakaya in New York City. He was so enthralled that he now lives in Japan and works in a tiny craft shochu distillery every autumn. His first book, The Complete Guide to Japanese Drinks, was nominated for a 2020 James Beard Award.

Stephen and Christopher have deep respect for Sanwa Shurui

If you have any comments or questions about this episode, please reach out to Stephen or Christopher via Twitter. We would love to hear from you. 

SHOW NOTES

Sanwa Shurui, Co. Ltd.

Sanwa Shuri, Co Ltd. was established in 1958 when 3 sake and shochu making families from Oita Prefecture merged. Within two years a 4th family would join. They would work together over the next 2 decades before hitting on the recipe that would make them the largest shochu producer in Japan.

iichiko arrives!

Iichiko 100% barley shochu hit the market in 1979 and never looked back. Today iichiko is the best selling barley shochu in Japan and the best selling export shochu in the world. The families of Sanwa Shurui had borrowed the vacuum distillation of 100% barley shochu that made Nikaido a very popular brand and weaponized it by doing what came naturally to a company that was essentially a cooperative across 4 families. Blending different distillates. While the formula is a secret, we do know that each of Sanwa Shurui’s many iichiko expressions is a blend of some of their more than two dozen 100% barley shochu recipes. While all use barley koji, the distillery works with a variety of koji strains, yeast strains, fermentation temperatures, still designs, cuts, and maturation methods to differentiate each based distillate into a component for their blends.

Stephen is fond of referring to iichiko to the Johnny Walker of Japan, but unlike Johnny Walker, all of the spirits blended into their products come from their own production facilities. Their headquarters in the countryside outside Usa City, Oita, make the bulk of their distillate and most of their blending and bottling happens there as well. However, the Hita Distillery, a former Nikka juice factory, is also hard at work making blending components as well as their own Hita-specific blends. Hita is a famous onsen town in southern Oita with very nice spring water, giving the Hita blends their own unique character.

While iichiko is delicious in its own right, the success of the brand has almost as much to do with the marketing campaign. The original tagline, which still appears on the domestic Japanese packaging today, can be translated as “Downtown Napoleon.” This implies iichiko is “cognac for the common people” and the reference worked. Iichiko would lead Japan into its first honkaku shochu “boom” with the spirits category finally breaking out of its home island of Kyushu to become a national beverage.

Another part of the marketing campaign is a monthly poster release in train stations across the country, which has continued non-stop since 1979. For the past 44 plus years, a new poster appears across the country with a bottle of iichiko somewhere in the photo. An urban street scene, a rural agricultural shot, alone in nature. The subtext being that iichiko is a shochu for every occasion no matter where you are.

There are now many iichiko expressions including the recently released 43% iichiko Saiten, which was consciously designed with the western bartender in mind. The grain forward expression (uncommon for Sanwa Shurui) mellows and rounds out with dilution, making it an excellent cocktail component.

Other premium expressions such as iichiko kurobin (literally black bottle) and iichiko frasco (“flask”) are on the pricey side, but add a complexity to the standard iichiko silhouette while appearing in striking packaging. All in all, Sanwa Shurui has managed to set themselves apart by making beautiful spirits in excellent livery. While they are no longer the biggest shochu maker thanks to the relatively recent ascendance of the popularity of sweet potato shochu, iichiko remains one of the industry leaders.

Their success is in no small part due to their leadership. The 4 families have rotated the president’s chair every few years – giving all of the families and opportunity, in turn, to put their fingerprints on the company. And they have done a wonderful job. Despite their size, Sanwa Shurui manages to maintain the culture of a much smaller distillery.

Cheers

More to Explore

If you’d like to learn more about Furusawa Distillery, please reach out to Stephen or Christopher.

Kanpai!

INTRO

In the 61st episode of the Japan Distilled podcast, at long last your hosts dive into soba shochu.

CREDITS

Theme Song: Begin Anywhere by Tomoko Miyata (http://tomokomiyata.net/)

Mixing and Editing: Rich Pav (https://www.uncannyjapan.com/)

HOSTS

CHRISTOPHER PELLEGRINI Vermont born and bred, long-time Tokyo resident and author of The Shochu Handbook, Christopher learned about delicious fermentations as a beer brewer at Otter Creek (Middlebury, VT). He now spends most of his waking hours convincing strangers that shochu and awamori are unlike anything they’ve ever tried before. 

STEPHEN LYMAN discovered Japan’s indigenous spirits at an izakaya in New York City. He was so enthralled that he now lives in Japan and works in a tiny craft shochu distillery every autumn. His first book, The Complete Guide to Japanese Drinks, was nominated for a 2020 James Beard Award.

Stephen and Christopher enjoy drinking their soba almost as much as they enjoy eating it.

If you have any comments or questions about this episode, please reach out to Stephen or Christopher via Twitter. We would love to hear from you. 

SHOW NOTES

Soba Shochu

Over the past 60 episodes we have covered, often with more than one episode, each of the other major shochu styles: sweet potato, barley, rice, and kokuto sugar. We intentionally avoided the 5th of the big 5: soba shochu. Why? Frankly, we didn’t know a whole lot about it. We’d been to many distilleries that make the style, but we had never been in the room during a fermentation. Beyond this, soba shochu is not that easy to find outside the main brands.

Soba, of course is buckwheat in English. Best known as a style of Japanese noodle, soba shochu was first developed in the 1970s in Miyazaki Prefecture by what is now known as the Unkai Distillery. Established in 1967, the Gokase Distillery released Unkai soba shochu in 1973. By 1978 they had changed their name to Unkai and they’ve never looked back. Unkai is now the 3rd largest products of shochu in Japan.

Soba shochu was a late starters, but is now the 5th most common ingredient, representing about 2% of all shochu consumed in Japan. Today Unkai is the most popular brand by a country mile, available in convenience stores, supermarkets, and liquor shops nationwide.

Unkai, like many “most popular” brands in a style, is a vacuum distilled soba shochu with bright aromas and a soft sweetness. It goes great on the rocks or with sparkling water, but due to the vacuum distillation it really doesn’t stand so far apart from a vacuum distilled rice or barley shochu.

What is Buckwheat Anyway?

Buckwheat is technically the seed of a fruit related to the rhubarb plant. This means that buckwheat is not a grain, which is the seed of a grass. Wheat, corn, barley, and rice are all grains. Buckwheat is sometimes referred to as a pesudograin, because its fruit lacks the sweet flesh we associate with fruits. Instead, the buckwheat seed is very grain-like with high starch content.

The Japanese government (and other governments around the world) do not seem to understand this nuance since buckwheat/soba is not a separate category for shochu – it falls into the grain bucket. Likewise, there are buckwheat whiskies sold elsewhere in the world and one of the defining characteristics of any recognized style of whisky globally is that its made from grains.

Buckwheat is a hearty grain, growing in nutrient poor soil and at higher elevations meaning that for much of our agrarian past, buckwheat was a very important staple crop in many parts of the world. The advent of commercial fertilizer has led to more fragile grains, which produce high yields per acre, to take over much of buckwheat’s former arable. The most well known buckwheat today comes from the steppes of Mongolia and within Japan, landlocked mountainous Nagano Prefecture it he leading producer.

Other Soba Shochu Brands to Try

While Unkai is the best selling, soba shochu gets very interesting when you start using an atmospheric still, which is the case with the Towari brand. Unfortunately, since Towari is owned by Takara, Inc., we may never know who actually makes it. Takara, a massive conglomerate, has contract distilling done for their honkaku shochu brands all over Japan with very strict non-disclosure agreements with their distilling partners.

Towari goes beyond being atmospheric distilled to being made with 100% soba. That’s right, the koji is grown on soba. Given the hard hulls, we imagine the soba is crushed or granulated before koji propagation. The resulting spirit is deep, rich, and roasty. A really lovely shochu to enjoy oyuwari.

Nagano, as the leading soba producing region in Japan, does have their own native soba shochu production, though there are fewer distilleries at work there than there are in Miyazaki where the style was created. One notable brand that caught Christopher’s attention (it’s easier to find Nagano soba shochu in Tokyo than in Kyushu) is the Toge brand.

Finally, a brand both Stephen and Christopher are a fan of is Soba Kuro from Himeizumi Distillery, hanging off a cliff in northern Miyazaki. This atmospheric distilled soba shochu is rich and decadent and plays well with just about any service style.

More to Explore

As always, there is much more to explore in the world of soba shochu. If you have any brands you particularly like that we didn’t talk about, please hit us up on social media.

Kanpai!