Turning Surplus Ingredients into Craft Gin: Sustainable Distillery CEO - Yamamoto Yuya

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"Turning Surplus Ingredients into Craft Gin" Sustainable Distillery CEO - Yamamoto Yuya

Sakaiminato, Tottori Prefecture.

This town is known for its nihonshu sake.

Made with locally grown rice,

this highly regarded beverage has won awards both domestically and overseas.

December 2021,

and with the sake-making season reaching its peak,

this brewery is facing an increasingly common problem.

The first step of sake making here, is fermentation of special sake rice.

The fermented mix, called "moromi,"

is then pressed through a machine like this one.

And the resulting liquid is filtered and pasteurized to become sake.

But the leftover solids, known as sake lees,

present a headache when it comes to disposal.

At this time of year, with one pressing of moromi every four days,

breweries can be left with up to 800 kilos of sake lees each time.

It's just the same task over and over.

We can't seem to avoid it.

Sake lees have a similar aroma and flavor to the sake itself,

and an alcohol content of around 8%.

Traditionally they were commonly reused as a medium

for making "kasuzuke" pickles.

But dietary shifts among the general public

have seen the production of kasuzuke

decline by more than 40% in the past decade alone.

And chief brewer Tsuboi Shinichi

has increasingly felt that change in the workplace.

We used to run out quickly,

and our sales team were constantly on our case demanding to know

how much we had left.

It's sad.

I mean, it does make me feel sad,

but in practical terms it's also a major headache.

Kuramae, eastern Tokyo.

This is the site of one venture

striving to make sure such sake lees don't go to waste.

This company was founded in 2020 by Yamamoto Yuya.

When I first heard about this problem,

it seemed like such a waste.

I mean, to me, sake lees is sake anyway.

But I thought, in theory, sake lees could be used to make gin.

Yamamoto's solution was to use these sake lees

in the production of spirits,

in his case, gin.

Most typical gin makers start by producing

an odorless base spirit from fermented wheat or rye.

Next, they infuse aroma with juniper berries

and their own distinctive blend of ingredients like almonds,

angelica and coriander.

But Yamamoto seized upon the strong nihonshu aroma contained within sake lees.

He decided to ferment this instead of wheat,

to imbue his drink with a sake aroma

from the base-spirit stage.

And he commissioned the sake brewery we visited in Tottori

to produce this base alcohol for him.

Tsuboi Shinichi lets us see the process in action.

He begins by dissolving the sake lees in water.

This mixture is then refermented for 20 days.

The aim is to reactivate the fresh sake aroma

that may have been lost while the lees were in storage.

Next, this 16% proof mixture is distilled to an alcohol content of over 40%

to be used as a base for gin.

So how is the nose of this base alcohol?

Floral...

like violet.

Floral huh?

It has a nihonshu aroma... and also a bit of rice.

It feels bad to say it,

but all that sake lees was kind of a burden.

But to see it take on a new use like this...

It's great to see it get a second chance to see the light of day.

The resulting spirit is sent to Yamamoto's distillery in Tokyo.

He's currently using sake lees

from five separate breweries across Japan,

and each one has its own distinctive aroma.

Here are two different base spirits to try.

Straight from the tanks,

he decants a sample from Tsuboi's brewery in Tottori,

and another from a brewery in Akita Prefecture, in northern Japan.

This spirit's from Tottori

has a real nihonshu aroma, from the "koji" and so on.

It's an aroma that anybody could recognize as nihonshu,

that's the main feel of this one.

Meanwhile, this one from Akita has a slight smokiness.

A mature, toasty aroma is what I'm getting here.

Every brewery's sake is different,

and these base spirits are an extension of that.

Yamamoto's gin is made by infusing these spirits with juniper berries,

the essential gin ingredient, and redistilling.

His distillery also has a bar attached.

Here they serve a range of cocktails and mixers

designed to complement his range of gins.

It smells great!

This "sonic" cocktail is mixed with soda and tonic.

It's a drink you want to enjoy nice and slowly.

It has that real quality nihonshu aroma.

Along with the sweetness and body of the sake lees.

Those are the qualities we try to accentuate.

In 2021,

the gin made with Tsuboi's spirit won a gold prize

at the International Wine and Spirits Competition in London.

At a blind tasting, judge and spirits expert David T. Smith

scored the drink 98 points out of a hundred.

This one, because it scored so highly,

I've tasted it several times.

What's exciting about this one in particular is...

on the nose, you're getting this complexity,

there's citrus, there's spice, there's fruitiness...

And then there's that slight sweet, savory kind of...

Something in the background that's a bit different.

Something exciting kind of thing.

It's good on its own, good mixability.

It's complex, exciting, different.

It's not the same as everything else. What's not to like?

But in 2021,

the world was still firmly in the grip of the COVID-19 pandemic.

In Japan,

bars and restaurants were requested to limit their hours,

refrain from serving alcohol, or even close altogether.

It was a huge blow for alcohol producers,

including this major international beer brand

and its regional head of marketing Shimada Takahiro.

With demand for beer in freefall,

around a tenth of their domestic stock ended up passing its use-by date.

Our cans and bottles are sold mainly at supermarkets and convenience stores,

while these kegs are made for bars and restaurants.

The reason we approached Yamamoto-san's firm was

to try and make sure this beer didn't go to waste.

Yamamoto responded by purchasing 60 thousand liters of beer

that was destined to be thrown away.

And, using the experience gained from making gin from sake lees,

he tried the same approach with beer.

Distilling the end product means

it's safe to drink regardless of the original beer's use-by date.

Just like sake lees,

different beers have different characteristics

that can be leveraged for diverse gins.

This one has a strong hoppy aroma.

Mito City, Ibaraki Prefecture.

Inspired by the challenge of making "beer gin,"

a local distillery agreed to produce the base alcohol.

Bubbles! Distillation's coming on nicely.

Visiting the plant is Ono Chikara,

a co-founder and COO of Yamamoto's firm.

He's come to check out the aroma of the beer-derived base spirit.

Double-distilling the 6% proof beer

gives an alcohol content of 55%.

It still has that lovely aroma.

How best to accentuate that beer vibe in the final product

is a really crucial point.

And the team is currently working towards a commercial release

for this new gin variety.

When you see all this lovely beer that's been made just getting thrown away...

It's such a waste. A crime.

Like, why? That's how this started.

Yamamoto Yuya was born in Ishikawa Prefecture,

a region with a sake-brewing history that dates back some 300 years.

But a friend from a brewing family told him that

many such businesses were losing the price war

with major manufacturers.

In 2017, at the age of 32,

to promote the appeal of regional nihonshu more widely

he launched his own sake shop,

and secured a domestic sake-tasting qualification.

Nowadays, in conjunction with a major sake brewer,

he runs this sake store and bar in Tokyo's Shibuya district.

Are you looking for something?

I was wondering about this one here.

Ah, that's made by a brewery in Niigata.

The store specializes in regional drinks that are seldom seen in Tokyo.

Not many places stock these drinks,

so you don't get the chance for a closer look, or a taste.

I was here in Shibuya, so I came along.

Yamamoto selected the 150+ varieties here

from his visits to breweries across Japan.

There's nowhere else to buy them.

There are so many good sakes out there,

but only limited chances to find out more,

and to actually get a closer look at them.

I just hope that we can promote them in some small way.

It was while visiting sake breweries nationwide

that Yamamoto first became aware of the issue of leftover sake lees.

I saw all these bags of sake lees.

And brewers would tell me that if you leave them,

they start to smell, or they attract bugs.

It's just not hygienic

so naturally they just pay subs to have them disposed of.

I heard that over and over.

Then, in 2018,

Yamamoto caught some news from the UK that piqued his interest.

For the first time, domestic gin sales had overtaken whiskey.

And it made him think that gin might just have a lot of potential.

I'd seen articles about the size of the gin market.

About how it had drawn level with whiskey, and then overtaken it.

I realized that kind of sales growth was possible.

Then in 2020,

with the aim of producing gin from otherwise discarded ingredients,

he founded his current company.

Setagaya Ward, Tokyo.

This coffee shop has a waste problem of its own.

Leftover coffee grounds from their daily brewing.

In term of mass, every day we throw out around 10 kilos,

and I'd long wondered if there wasn't some way we could put them to use.

Of course, the easiest way is just to throw them out,

but for ages I'd wished we could find a good way to reuse them.

The used grounds don't really taste that great when rebrewed.

But they do have a rich coffee aroma.

Yamamoto's distillery has agreed to take some of these grounds,

which arrive in air-tight packs to preserve the aroma.

The plan is to use them as a botanical

to create a new gin with notes of coffee.

In charge is master distiller Yamaguchi Ayumu.

Having conducted postgrad research into the taste mechanisms of sake

at Tokyo University of Agriculture,

he joined Yamamoto's firm after hearing about

the production of base spirits from sake lees.

This is the company's gin still.

The base sake and selected botanicals are heated together in the still.

This time they'll be mixing the leftover coffee grounds

with the base sake from Akita Prefecture.

Once evaporated,

the mixture is cooled and condensed

as it passes along pipes that run through a water tank.

It's still early, so we haven't quite got the full coffee flavor yet.

But I am getting some floral notes.

Yes.

There is a slight earthy, beany quality.

Meanwhile, Yamamoto has something else planned to promote this coffee gin.

Otemachi, the heart of Tokyo's business district,

where numerous leading firms have their head offices.

Yamamoto is launching a cafe that serves coffee in the daytime,

and gin made with coffee grounds in the evening.

He aims to leverage office workers' coffee habit

to build awareness of this special gin.

For people who drink coffee but have never really tried gin,

coffee can be the hook for them to try our sustainable gin

and learn that gin can be made from coffee grounds.

January 2022.

It's the opening day of Yamamoto's new cafe.

Early morning, and sure enough office workers

drift by in search of their pre-work coffee fix.

It was a very mild, drinkable coffee.

So, with step one complete,

it's a positive reception for the coffee.

Next, the day's grounds are collected in dedicated bags,

to be reborn as coffee gin at Yamamoto's distillery.

And that evening,

with workers filtering out of their offices,

can they be tempted with the promise of gin?

Here is your drink. Thank you for waiting.

Yet again some workers show up for a post-shift tipple.

Yes, it does have a slight bitterness.

It's rather interesting.

It's the first time I've tried it,

but it definitely has that coffee vibe.

It's very nice.

It's interesting to see how things that

normally get thrown away can be reborn like this.

It makes you wonder what else they can do.

One of the morning's coffee drinkers also stops by.

Cheers!

Pairing coffee and gin like this got me interested.

Coffee in the morning, and gin after work!

It's exactly the response Yamamoto was aiming for.

And he and his team have also been working with another unlikely castoff.

These are cacao husks.

They still have that cacao aroma.

These cacao husks are a common byproduct of chocolate production.

In his constant hunt for botanicals,

Yamaguchi was tipped off by a friend

who runs a cacao processing firm.

With a gritty, unpleasant texture even when finely ground,

in the chocolate industry they are routinely thrown away.

But Yamaguchi feels they'll be perfect for adding aroma to gin.

They're ideal for distillation.

They present a big surface area to interact with the base alcohol.

And they're low in oils and moisture,

so they give up their aromatic compounds very readily.

Sustainability aside, it's a really great ingredient.

To complement the cacao,

he selects another base spirit from Akita

with distinctive pineapple notes.

And after a night of soaking...

they get down to distilling the cacao and spirit mixture.

Hey there.

Yamamoto arrives to check on progress.

It's too hot. These bubbles are a bit scary.

Yamaguchi fine tunes the temperature

to prevent bubbling over, or burning of the cacao.

I think we're almost there.

And how is this combination of sake lees and cacao?

I think this combination heightens enjoyment of the aromas

of both the cacao and the base spirit.

Thank you.

Within a sustainable context,

what I want to achieve is something you can enjoy on its own merits.

The main thing is flavor.

And if our products are ethical and sustainable too,

then that's a bonus.

And I think Yamamoto-san feels the same way.

September 2021, in London, England.

We attended this alcohol trade show.

Yamamoto was here too,

on his first trip to promote his award-winning gin

and his cacao gin to an international audience.

We use cacao husks, the external parts.

Usually, they're discarded because compared to cacao beans,

cacao husks are unusable regarded as unimportant.

How was the response of drinkers here in the UK?

It's very easy to drink.

Nicely goes down. And it's refreshing.

So, it's your company?

Found in... 2020?

It's very young.

It goes well with tonic water.

Yes, it goes very well with tonic water.

Very nice. Do you want to try it as well?

Yeah, I might try that one as well.

Fantastic.

It was really wonderful, lovely to meet you.

And the day's positive response also saw a dealer from France

enquire about ordering some of Yamamoto's cacao gin.

Ethics and sustainability should be an everyday approach.

Our ideal is something so tasty you want to drink it,

but just happens to be sustainable too.

That's the value we want to provide.

And Yamamoto Yuya's continuing quest to make craft gin

from previously surplus ingredients

is the embodiment of that ideal.