Yugeta Ginjo Jun-nama Shoyu (弓削多 吟醸純生しょうゆ)
The story behind it
Yugeta Shoyu, with breweries in Sakado and Hidaka in Saitama, was founded in 1923. The Hidaka site has a visitor facility called Shoyu Okoku, where the cellar of standing wooden vats can be seen as it is.
Ginjo Jun-nama Shoyu is pressed from moromi in wooden vats and bottled without heat pasteurization, fine filtration, or any adjustment of its components. Most raw soy sauce sold in shops skips the heating but still filters out the yeast and lactic acid bacteria so it can be distributed at room temperature. This one skips that filtration too, so it must be kept refrigerated and can only be shipped cold.
Because the microbes remain alive, it does not keep long once opened. In exchange, it retains the aroma of soy sauce just pressed, and a rounded sweetness that heated soy sauce does not have.
Marking its centenary, the brewery commissioned new thirty-koku cedar vats and continues to brew in wood.
How to use it
Pour it straight over sashimi or chilled tofu to check the aroma of soy sauce that has never been heated. Also good on egg over rice, or on the crisp bottom of freshly cooked rice. Heat drives off what makes this bottle worth having, so use it as a finishing soy sauce rather than in simmered dishes.