Making the old new again

The brewery credited with producing the Tobu train company sake in the story above is also interesting–it’s named as Kobayashi Jōzō (小林醸造) but searching on the brewery address gives a different name, Maenikko Jōzōjo (前日光醸造所). But the website domain is “small forest”–a literal translation of Kobayashi. I wasn’t sure if there had been a name change at some point (it looks like Maenikko is the name for that specific brewing site while Kobayashi is the company operating it), but that wasn’t what caught my attention.

The brewery is brand new, started in 2024 in what was once the gym of a now closed elementary school in Kanuma City, Tochigi Prefecture. And the owner, Ichizo Kobayashi, actually sold sake at a B2B retail shop in Kanuma before being approached by a local credit union with an offer to take over the license of another Tochigi brewery (Ikeshima in Otawara, makers of Ikenishiki) after the owner and tōji became too old to carry on. 

Kobayashi’s path to operating a brewery was not a straight one. He had studied at the Tokyo University of Agriculture, the university of choice for sake brewers, and spent seven years working with Takeo Koizumi, an authority on fermentation science. However, this was all in order to take over the family business, a liquor shop in Utsunomiya city. Kobayashi used his connections from his time at the university to build up the number of sake brands they stocked, and made the Kanuma branch into a specialist sake shop. The company had previously sold a private brand called Kanuma Musume, which Kobayashi was able to revive by outsourcing production to other breweries.

Recognising that the sake market was crowded, Kobayashi decided to set his brewery apart by focusing on white-label or custom-made sake, an idea he got from Sekiya Shuzo in Aichi Prefecture. His family also had connections with the brewery owners, and as their sales areas did not overlap Sekiya agreed to help Kobayashi set up.

The tōji at Maenikko Jōzōjo, Terasawa, is an old friend of Kobyashi’s from university who had gained experience working for other breweries before training at Sekiya and joining Kobayashi in his new venture. The brewing space is a compact 550 square meters, and they work at a very small scale with just 60 kg of rice per tank (about 5–10% of a normal size batch). The 200 L stainless steel tanks they use for their main production are starter tanks for other breweries! Terasawa commented that working at smaller scale demands a very different approach to making koji and managing the moromi.

Kobayashi will continue making Isenishiki for customers of the former Ikeshima Shuzō, and also Kanuma Musume which he once contracted out to other breweries. He took the doors from the Isenishiki kōji room and used them in the new site, and has committed to sourcing both the wood for the new kōji room and the rice for Kanuma Musume from the local area.

These two labels are not enough to sustain the business, and Kobayashi sees custom-made sake as their main source of revenue. Customers can choose the water, koji, yeast, rice polishing ratio, starter (sokujo or yamahai/kimoto), pressing method and characteristics of the sake (aromatic, sweet versus dry, etc.). The brewery has its own miniature rice polishing machine so customers can even bring their own rice and brewing water.

Kobayashi hopes to continue developing the school site and build a restaurant and accommodation to provide more in-depth sake brewing experiences. 
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Maenikko Jōzōjo site (Japanese)
酒販店から酒蔵へ。廃校した小学校跡でオーダーメイドの日本酒を造る – 栃木県・小林醸造 (Sake Street, 8 Oct 2024, Japanese)