Asahi Shuzo Co Ltd Dassai

Asahi Sake Brewery, which currently produces Japan’s best-selling local brand Dassai, is located deep in the remote mountains of Yamaguchi Prefecture, and 30 years ago it was a small, loss-making brewery with even its brewer on the run. The person who rebuilt it was the current chairman, Hiroshi Sakurai. Currently, he is passing the baton to his eldest son, President Kazuhiro Sakurai, and continues to accompany him. Recently, a story has been circulating that “Dassai built a modern factory capable of producing 50,000 koku, and has been making everything using machines,” but if you go to see the warehouse, you’ll realize that this is an urban legend.
Dassai’s preparation tank is small. One bottle is 3000 liters. There are 300 of them. If you make one tank 10 times the size and make 30 tanks, the work will be much easier. However, Dassai remains the same way of making sake as it did when it was a small brewery. This is also reflected in the production of koji. The koji room is certainly large and looks like a gymnasium, but lined up in rows are boxes of koji that were kept in the old koji room. The brewers are taking care of it using human wave tactics.
Now that you think about it, they have also introduced state-of-the-art equipment such as centrifuges and carbon dioxide micro-nano bubble devices. “It’s all about the taste. The introduction of the machine is not to make things easier, but to take on the challenge of creating new flavors,” says President Sakurai. The company is also keen on exporting, and in addition to having a store in Paris, it is currently building an American factory on the outskirts of New York. (Mayumi Eguchi)