Sake News from Japan / Sake Muse

How does a new sake yeast move from the lab into the kura?  As mentioned above in the article on bitterness, one step it usually goes through is test brewing, where a small number of breweries are asked to use the new yeast and report back to the developers on how...

We've seen breweries use crowdfunding for everything from limited releases and equipment upgrades to total reconstruction after disasters. Now Nagano Prefecture has raised the stakes with a goal of JPY 2 million to be funded through furusato nōzei ("hometown tax"*)...

Much as I hesitate to introduce another existential risk to the sake industry, let's talk about drinking. As in drinking alcohol at all. A 2024 survey by Hakuhodo Seikatsu Souken revealed that 1 in 3 Japanese respondents never drink alcohol. A Fukuoka beer garden...

While most of my activity is based around information about sake in Japanese that has not yet made it into English–this one has! I was honoured to translate a report written by Nami Goto (former head of the National Research Institute of Brewing (NRIB) and current...

Bitterness... is it really always a bad thing?  Not according to Toshihiko Koseki, special advisor to the Yamagata Prefecture Brewers Association, who went so far as to develop a special variety of yeast that produces more bitter compounds! An article in Nikkei Gooday...

Although the worst case scenario of US tariffs of 25% did not come to pass, the increase from 2% to 15% will still pose huge problems for breweries who export heavily to America. President Honda of Kumamoto brewery Chiyosono Shuzō (千代の園酒造) has seen his sake make...

As predicted, the Japanese government started accepting applications for stockpiled rice to be released for "processing" to make products such as sake and miso on 1 August 2025. The decision was made after appeals from industry organisations. 75,000 tons of rice from...

What to do about US tariffs? One option open to larger breweries is to simply produce in the USA, so that their sake becomes a domestic product.  Nikkei business reports that big Niigata brewer Hakkaisan are considering exactly this, as it already increased prices in...

For sake brewers (and presumably many other food and drink producers) Christmas in Japan comes at New Year. The graph above from Diamond Online shows sales of all types of sake between April 2024 and March 2025, with a massive spike in December attributed to...