Love visiting Japan's small town and islands. For this round, we visited Shodoshima Island which is famous for soy sauce breweries. Every corner of this beautiful island is surrounded by soy sauce breweries.
However, most of the soy sauce breweries now no longer use traditional handmade method to brew and packaging their soy sauce. Other than soy sauce breweries, there are lots of olive farm around the island too.
For soy sauce brewery, we chose to visit the Yama-Roku Shoyu brewery 山六醤油厂 that have more than 150 years of history in making soy sauce. Until now, they are still using the old hand method to brew and packaging their soy sauce. From searching the right tree to making of the Koike wooden barrel, to brew, to bottle and to pack, everything were taught to the next generation so that they can learn and preserve the history from the pass. We were truly amazed by their efforts and hard work.
We took the local Azukijima Olive bus 当地橄榄巴士 to Yasuda bus station. Then we walked 1.2km for about 15mins. We enjoyed walking along the way as we saw lots of pretty flowers, vegetables planted by the villagers, the smells from the orange trees, lots of olive trees, Japanese old houses, cute manholes and etc.
We did not make any reservations for the visitation, but they allows us to tour around the brewery with guidance and even tasting some of their limited series food products made by their soy sauce.
Yama-Roku Shoyu brewery is now taken care by the 5th generation. During the brewery tour, we were told that one of their colleague worked in Singapore before and she was married to a Malaysian guy. She was now in long distance relationship with her husband.
We were brought into the fermentation area, in which, the Koike (wooden barrel) has the longest history of more than 150 years fermentation. Really impressive! The moment we entered the room, we were filled up with the fragrant of soy sauce. We were allowed to climb up the stairs to get a closer look up into the fermentation residues which sits on top of each soy sauce fermentation wooden barrel. It is something called "moromi". It can be used for cooking or acts as a dressing. We were lucky that the guide was able to explain everything in English. I would say, it was really an eye opening experience.
"Moromi"
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After that, we were brought to the tasting area, which was my favourite part of the tour.
There were 5 different bottles of soy sauce to try on!
From right to the left, it is the 菊醬 Kikubishio, 鶴醬 Tsurubishio, 特别版的鶴醬 秋和冬限定品 Special Edition of Tsurubishio (Autumn & Winter limited edition), ぽん酢 Ponzu and 菊つゆ Kiku Tsuyu.
The specialty of their soy sauce is that all the soy sauce that they brewed here were using the double-layered brew method. 菊醤 Kikubishio used salt water in their double-layered brew method with the highest grade of black beans. The black beans were known as the "diamond of the field", by Tamba city of Japan. 菊醤 Kikubishio has one of the normal colour of Koikuchi soy sauce. It has a very soft and crispy umami taste of soy sauce.
While the 鶴醤 Tsurubishio used soy sauce for their double-layered brew method to brew as 鶴醤 Tsurubishio is one of the kind of Saishikomi soy sauce, not the Koikuchi soy sauce. Furthermore, the 鶴醤 Tsurubishio uses the highest grade of soy beans, instead of using the black beans. It needs 4 years to brew up a good quality soy sauce. It is really precious. I appreciate my soy sauce even more starting from now. The best way to enjoy this precious soy sauce is to eat it directly with foods or snacks or even as the vanilla ice-cream topping.
The 特别版的鶴醬 秋和冬限定品 special edition of Tsurubishio (Autumn & Winter limited edition) is very famous among all the series of their soy sauce too. It was limited to autumn and winter season only. How special is this edition? The specialty of this edition was the way how they package this soy sauce into glass bottle directly without going through any sterilization process on the bottle and also the soy sauce. After the fermentation process of the soy sauce is completed, the soy sauce is directly bottled up and store in the fridge at a desired temperature whereas the good soy sauce bacteria was still live up in the bottle. Therefore, the bottled soy sauce still contains lively good bacteria. It must be keep in cold temperature in order to keep it good.
Next is the ぽん酢 Ponzu. It is a type of vinegar. It can be used in many ways like salad dressings, marinate sauce, cooking sauce and etc.
Then is the 菊つゆ Kiku Tsuyu. This is the type of soy sauce that combines with umami soup base. It is very frequent use in Japanese's household for soba, udon, tempura and etc. This is the concentrate version whereas water is needed to add in or mix into the taste you like. 菊つゆ Kiku Tsuyu is made up of 菊醤 Kikubishio as the soy sauce base with 北海道 Hokkaido kelp, bonito, brown sugar and 鹿児島 Kagoshima cooking wine.
Other than soy sauce, they also produce some of their soy sauce snacks, sauces like soy sauce almonds, miso, moromi, tomato sauce, soy sauce popcorns and many more soy sauce snacks. We tasted everything and bought most of it.
This is their limited soy sauce pudding which is only available during the weekends. We came in weekdays therefore, we were not able to enjoy this but we can still enjoy their soy sauce ice-cream!
After souvenirs shopping, it is time for us to enjoy some of their soy sauce desserts. We ordered the soy sauce ice-cream and soy sauce grilled mochi. Very yum, especially the ice-cream!
Grilled mochi with their 3 selected soy sauce, 菊醤 Kikubishio, 鶴醤 Tsurubishio and 菊つゆ Kiku Tsuyu. Even though 鶴醤 Tsurubishio is more precious and expensive, it does not goes pretty well with the mochi. We like it more grilling with the 菊醤 Kikubishio. It tastes better. Actually came to think of it, 菊つゆ Kiku Tsuyu should be even more better as it contains not only soy sauce, it has bonito, kelp, brown sugar and cooking wine too. However, it tasted a bit weird to us, not really into this version.
I really hope to be back again someday, but maybe in another different season, as winter season has limited bus schedule around the island, therefore, time controlled is really important during winter, in order to travel around the island.
Contact: +81 879-82-0666
Entrance: Free
Access: Took Azukijima olive bus to Yasuda bus station and walk about 15mins for 1.2km.
26 Jan 2023, Winter, Sunny, 6 degree.
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