Nishio Brewing

Miso used to be made in the family, the true “taste of home”. But with the economic expansion of the Edo period, some kinds of miso became more popular than others and their use spread nationwide. Nishio’s red miso is renowned for keeping its aroma even when it is boiled and for rounding out the taste of other ingredients in cooking.

Misokattsu pork cutlets and Doteni udon noodles simmered in miso have long been favorites of the regional cuisine of Aichi. In recent years, people are becoming more aware of the nutritional value of soy products like miso and it is even attracting attention as a health food around the world now.

Because miso is a fermented food, traditional miso makers are often called jōzō – breweries – in Japanese. There are three of them in Nishio.

Click here for Soybean Miso Cuisine

The shioda salt evaporation ponds on the sandy shore in Kira, in the south of Nishio City are mentioned in historical records from the Japanese Middle Ages, the Muromachi period. In the following Edo period, Kira Kozukenosuke Yoshinaka pioneered a new salt production method, making salt ponds lined with channels, called “irihama”. They were used to evaporate sea water down to a higher salt concentration which was then boiled to crystallize the salt.

In those days, aiba-jio salt from Kira was prized because of its low content of the bitter nigari (magnesium chloride) and was traded along the Sanshukaido salt road all the way to Toyoda and Nagano. It was also a key ingredient in Okazaki’s famous Hatcho Miso.

Gradually, more modern salt production methods prevailed and the salt ponds were abolished nationwide in 1971. The last remaining salt maker in Nishio was Aiba Shionosato in Kira. Today, some of their salt ponds have been restored and you can try boiling brine and making your own salt at a museum there.

From a legal standpoint nihonshu (Japanese saké) is called seishu (refined saké).

•A filtered product that uses rice, malted rice and water that has been allowed to ferment, as its main ingredients.

•A filtered product that uses rice, malted rice and refined saké (seishu) lees and other ingredients that have been allowed to ferment as stipulated by a cabinet order, as its main ingredients.
After meeting either of these two requirements,

•With an alcohol content of less than 22%

products that meet the above conditions are defined as seishu (refined saké.) Futhermore, the name nihonshu (Japanese saké) is only applied to seishu (refined saké) made within Japan.

This opportunity was the beginning of contract cultivation in the Toba area.

Even today, excellent saké rice is cultivated in this area and this supports Sonnoh Brewery’s saké brewing.

We at Sonnoh Brewery, devote all our time and effort to provide our customers with delicious saké. In-house rice polishing is one of the steps in our saké making process, which is now rare.

There are two theories about the origin of mirin: one is it was brought into Japan from China, and the other is it was born in Japan when shochu such as nerizake and shirozake (both are sake existed in Japan since long ago) was added to sweet sake to prevent it from spoiling and that turned into mirin. It was originally drunk as a sweet sake and became popular among the ordinary people.

In the late Edo period, the foundation of Japanese cuisine was established, and the sweetness of mirin was used as a seasoning for eel sauce and soba (buckwheat noodle) dipping sauce. It was also produced in Mikawa, where brewing was popular.

The manufacturing method was passed on and developed to current “Honmirin (literally: true mirin) ” which is the result of the saccharification and maturation of glutinous rice, koji rice and shochu. The later “Mirin-fu Chomiryo (literally: Mirin-style seasoning) is completely different in terms of ingredients and manufacturing methods.

The main ingredient of Honmirin is glucose, which is rounder and more refined than the sweetness of sugar. The rich flavor soaks into the ingredients and gives them a deep sweet taste. It also has a variety of cooking effects that make food taste amazing, such as glazing and browning, and its alcohol content erase the fishy smell and prevents breakage in cooking.

There are only a handful of Honmirin breweries in Japan, but Mikawa Mirin, which is made from a mixture of rice shochu and kasudori shochu, has a strong aroma. Brewery in Mikawa continues to preserve this tradition to this day.

Amongst the various stages of production, the pressing process is where Aioi Unibio’s unique touch can be seen most clearly. Artisans manually place the moromi inside bags and press it to produce amber-colored mirin. “Our company’s mirin is made using a large amount of rice, and due to moromi’s thickness, it is difficult to mechanize this process.

An old method of pressing is used, where the moromi is manually packed together tightly in a bag before the actual pressing takes place. The process takes an entire day. We continue this traditional process in order to meet the expectations of customers who have a particularly refined sense of taste. Aioi Unibio participates at the local product booths at Nishio City Culture Hall every autumn. “At our booth, we share suggestions for sweets made using mirin.

Mirin is associated with Japanese cooking, but it can actually be used as an ingredient in Western sweets as well. The flavor from the rice’s starch has a sweetness to it that’s even richer than that of sugar.

We want to continue sharing information like this so that more people can learn about appeal of mirin.