Yamaroku Soy Sauce
Down a warren of narrow lanes lined with walls made of the granite seen in the rugged mountains of Shodoshima Island that rise up behind the quiet residential neighborhood, you’ll find Yasuo Yamamoto brewing soy sauce in a veritable forest of large wooden barrels (called kioke) housed in a shed next to his home.
The fifth generation brew master of Yamaroku Soy Sauce, a family business started some 150 years ago, Yasuo makes soy sauce the old-fashioned way. Beginning each year in late fall, he mixes equal amounts of steamed soy beans and toasted wheat with a generous helping of sea salt and copious amounts of fresh water, which he gets from a well on the property. He then lets this mash ferment in the kioke for a period of at least two summers.
The soy sauce he produces has a strong, earthy taste with hints of sweetness, acidity, and bitterness (akin to that of dark chocolate), and a pleasing alcoholic finish. Its aroma is savory and appetizing; its color dark red, almost black. Above all, it is imbued with umami. In fact, the kind of soy sauce Yasuo brews has more umami than any other plant-based source except for konbu seaweed.
The word that Yasuo likes to use to describe the taste of his soy sauce is “authentic,” tracing its flavor to the days when Shodoshima was a leading producer of soy sauce during Japan’s Edo period (1603-1868). Then, the island’s soy sauce was shipped to Tokyo and beyond, helping to create the country’s umami-rich dishes we know today: fragrant dipping sauces for sashimi and sushi, shiny glazes for meats, and comforting broths for noodles.
The simplicity of Yasuo’s approach to making soy sauce is not only due to his adherence to his family’s old-time recipe. Soy sauce brewers are like winemakers, and they fall into two schools of thought: nature versus nurture. Yasuo is a passionate member of the former. He believes that great soy sauce should be what nature intends, and he intervenes in the process as little as possible.
Yasuo explains that his “terroir” is the millions of micro-organisms that live in the earthen floor, clay walls, and wooden beams of the brewery and also in the kioke, many of which are over 100 years old. The micro-organisms include over one hundred different kinds of yeasts and lactic acid bacteria, each adding its own particular function and flavor to the fermentation process. His role, he says, is to provide them with the best possible ingredients, which include strong-flavored black soy beans from the Tamba area west of Kyoto, the most famous soy bean producing region in Japan, and Sanuki no Yume 2009 wheat that is grown across the straits from Shodoshima on Shikoku Island, the home of udon noodles.
Yasuo limits his activities to encouraging the micro-organisms to work their magic. Aware that they are living things, he goes to the brewery every day “to greet and talk to them,” he says. Adding that, they, in turn, “know that someone is there” by the bubbling sounds and aromas they emit. During the first phase of fermentation, the brewery is filled with the aroma of apples, bananas, and melons. By summer, the smell of chocolate is in the air.
Throughout the year, Yasuo paddles the mash to aerate it, helping the micro-organisms to grow and ferment the mash. When it’s ready, he presses the soy sauce by the labor-intensive method of filling cloth bags with the mash and squeezing out every last drop of its flavor. Last, he pasteurizes and bottles it. While no two barrels of soy sauce taste the same, Yasuo tells you, he knows how to blend them to create a consistent flavor.
Working alone, doing everything by hand, doesn’t leave Yasuo much free time. But any he has he spends making kioke and spreading the word about their key role in making fermented foods. The wood panels of the barrels not only harbor beneficial micro-organisms, but also allow the mash to breathe, ensuring a safe fermentation during the long time it takes to brew authentic soy sauce.
"Kioke-Kai" Barrel-Making Gathering
Every late January, once the fervor of the new soy sauce season subsides, Yasuo dedicates himself to crafting new kioke barrels, not just for his use but also for fellow fermented food makers. Helped by skilled carpenters and joined by fermentation aficionados, this week-long event is a hands-on experience open to all. Attendees can delve into various aspects of barrel-making: from splitting bamboo for the essential braiding to expertly planing and mitering cedar planks, and even carving the wooden pins that bind the planks together. The rewards are great camaraderie, a home-cooked lunch, and the chance to sign your name, in time-honored tradition, onto the inner rim of a freshly-made barrel.
Until Yasuo took up barrel-making, after learning the craft in 2012 from one of the last of Japan’s two kioke makers, it was a dying craft and fermentation tool, with most fermented food makers having switched to using plastic tubs and steel tanks during the last century. Today, among Japan’s soy sauce makers, less than 1% of soy sauce is brewed in kioke. But as a result of Yasuo’s efforts, the trend is reversing, with large commercial as well as small artisanal soy sauce brewers increasing their use of kioke.
Many of these brewers, including artisanal ones, ascribe to the “nurture” school of thought and tinker with the basic recipe and process and also incorporate modern equipment into their processes. Their aim is to diversify the flavor and functionality of their soy sauce to better compete and, also, to meet the needs of Japan’s evolving cuisine. But, they all tend to agree that kioke are the essential ingredient in producing the deep, rich umami that is soy sauce’s most important culinary quality.
Yamaroku Soy Sauce (ヤマロク醤油)
1607 Yasuda, Shozu-cho, Shodoshima, Kagawa Prefecture 761-4411
Tel: +81 (0879) 82 0666
Web: http://yama-roku.net
Yasuo has made Yamaroku Soy Sauce a delightful place to visit. Near the shop at the entrance to the brewery that sells Yamaroku's products, there are stools and tables where you can taste his soy sauce and have tea and soy sauce flavored snacks and desserts, such as soy sauce roasted rice cakes, soy sauce pudding, and ice cream topped with soy sauce. Yasuo will also gladly take you on a tour inside the brewery. The tour is free, and reservations aren’t necessary. As Yasuo says, he’s “happy to accommodate even a surprise visit.” The brewery is open every day from 9:00 to 17:00 year round.
Where to Buy
Yamaroku Soy Sauce has become fairly widely available and can be found at major department stores, speciality food shops, and online not only across Japan, but also in many parts of the world.
How to Use
Reflecting his belief that nature makes soy sauce not him, Yasuo has a limited product line compared to many other soy sauce brewers who offer a range of types of soy sauce and other speciality products. Here is Yasuo’s line-up of soy sauces:
From the left: “Chotto Osharei Ponzu”, unpasteurized “Tsuru-Bishio”, and pasteurized “Tsuru-Bishio”.
“Kiku-Bishio” — is an all-purpose koikuchi (dark, deep-tasting) soy sauce. Made with rich, strong-flavored Tamba black soy beans and fermented and aged naturally for up to two and half years, it’s a slightly sharp, more earthy-tasting soy sauce than many other types of koikuchi. It can be used as a seasoning, condiment, or complete sauce in itself. It’s the soy sauce to use in cooking, and is good for pickling and preserving foods, caramelizing grilled meats, roasting vegetables, long simmered, braised, and stewed dishes, and with many classic Japanese recipes and when an Asian flavor is desired. In general, “Kiku-Bishio” is best used with rich seafoods and meats and in highly seasoned and spiced dishes.
“Tsuru-Bishio” — Yasuo considers this Yamaroku's flagship product, being its richest, most deeply-flavored and also mellow soy sauce. It’s made according to the saishikomi (re-brewing) method, in which one- to two-year-old soy sauce is mixed with a fresh batch of steamed soy beans and toasted wheat and fermented and aged for two to three more years. As Yasuo describes it, “Tsuru-Bishio” is made with twice the ingredients and twice the time.” The result is a delicious soy sauce, with a rich, sweet, fruity aroma and deep, creamy umami flavor. While “Tsuru-Bishio” can be used in cooking, it’s best used as a finishing soy sauce to add aroma, color, and flavor to foods at the table or used only in the last seconds of cooking to best take advantage of its nuanced flavor. It’s great as a dipping sauce for sashimi and sushi, especially for fatty deep-sea fish like tuna. It can also be drizzled on tofu, cheese, roasted vegetables, and grilled meats and as a topping for desserts such as puddings, ice cream, and cheesecake. In addition to pasteurized “Tsuru-Bishio,” Yasuo offers an unpasteurized version to provide the truest taste of his umami-rich “terroir.”
Yamaroku Soy Sauce also sells two traditional types of blended sauces made in collaboration with Yamamo Takahashi Shoten, another artisanal Shodoshima soy sauce brewer, founded in 1852.
“Kiku-Tsuyu” — is a dashi-joyu; a versatile, all-purpose concentrated pre-mix of dashi stock and soy sauce which uses Yamaroku’s “Kiku-Bishio” soy sauce as a base. The dashi stock is made from Rausu konbu, the richest tasting type of konbu kelp seaweed made in Hokkaido, and dried bonito flakes from Makurazaki on Kyushu Island. It’s sweetened with Japan’s premier raw cane sugar from Tanegashima Island. “Kiku-Tsuyu” is a rich, delicious, aromatic sauce that can be used to make marinades, dipping sauces, and broths for somen, udon, and soba noodles. It’s also good for simmering vegetables, in nabe hotpot dishes, and drizzled on top of rice mixed with an egg.
“Chotto Osharei Ponzu” — which translates as “a little luxurious ponzu" also uses “Kiku-Bishio” as a base and mixes that with generous amounts of yuzu and sudachi juice from citrus grown nearby on Shikoku Island to create a rich yet very refreshing sauce that’s good as a dressing for salads and vinegared dishes, condiment for grilled meats, and dipping sauce for beef shabu-shabu and chicken mizutaki hotpots, gyoza, and more.