Why Only 1% Of Japan’s Soy Sauce Is Made This Way

Did you know that a barrel can last for more than 100 years? Yasuo, a man from Japan, makes barrels out of bamboo strips. He wraps the bamboo around the barrel because soy sauce is really salty and can damage metal. It takes at least three people to put together one barrel, but not many people do this anymore. Modern machines have taken over and most barrel makers in Japan went out of business. But Yasuo learned how to make his own barrels!

Prior to utilizing these barrels, a combination of crushed wheat and steamed soybeans is blended with koji, a fungus utilized to initiate the fermentation procedure. The fungus growth is controlled by a vast container that regulates temperature. Following a two-day period, the mixture is transferred to the moromi house. This is where wooden barrels aid in the creation of the environment needed for bacteria to thrive. Each barrel is filled with over one ton of the soybean mixture and salt water.

When Yasuo and his team work with soybeans, they move them around a lot. This makes the soybeans rub against each other and get little tears. These tears let other tiny living things called bacteria get inside and start to break down the soybeans. The workers also put air into the barrel to make the yeast more active. Yasuo says that the microbes do most of the work, but he still has a tough job. He has to check on the soybeans every day to see if they need to be mixed. He can tell how far along they are in the process by how they smell and look.

Okay, so Yasuo has these soybeans that he's letting sit and ferment for a really long time - like a year and a half! He's got 87 barrels of them at different stages of the fermenting process. Yasuo thinks that a really good barrel is one that will last longer than he will. Cool, huh?

"Hey, did you know that in Japan they've been making these barrels for a really long time? Like, since the 17th century! But then during World War II, things got really tough because it was hard to find the materials they needed to make the barrels. But the government knew how important it was for people to have their favorite seasoning, so they told factories to make the barrels faster and cheaper. This was good for big companies, but it was really hard for small businesses like Yasuo's family. They had a tough time keeping up with all the changes."

Back in 2003, this guy's dad got really sick and had to stop working. So, the guy had to take over the family business, which was in a lot of debt. He had to learn a bunch of stuff on his own, like how to use this machine called a press. After waiting for a year and a half, he put the soybean mixture into the machine and covered it with a special cloth. Then, over the course of 10 days, the machine slowly squeezed out the soy sauce.

So, there are these factories that make soy sauce. They try to make it really fast by pressing it all at once. But there's this guy named Yasuo who thinks that taking your time is important if you want to make good soy sauce. After the first stage, some of the soy sauce goes back into a barrel with more soybeans and wheat for two more years. This makes Yasuo's special kind of soy sauce called saishkomi. It's darker and stronger than regular soy sauce. When you let the soybeans ferment for a long time, it makes the soy sauce taste sweeter. Some big companies try to copy Yasuo's way by adding sweeteners to their soy sauce.

Chefs, like Hitoshi Kishimoto, want their food to taste just right. He's been running his restaurant, Koyomi, for five years in Shorashima. He uses a special sauce called naturally fermented soy sauce to make his food taste amazing. He even uses a brand new kind of soy sauce called Yasuo's. It gives his food a balanced flavor that's really yummy!

If we want to keep making soy sauce the old-fashioned way, we need to keep making barrels. That's why this guy named Yusuo teaches people how to make barrels every year. He sells his special soy sauce to people all over the world, and it costs about three times more than the regular kind you can buy at the store. He really cares about keeping this tradition alive and wants to make sure people know how to do it right. It's like his life's mission!