Could we really make it?
When people hear soy sauce, they probably imagine it being made in a big wooden brewery. You can make miso at home, but not soy sauce. We too were full of doubts and worries before we started.
Still, one encounter led to another, and in 2016 soy sauce making began at Minna no Uen Kitakagaya. Our model was a method of making soy sauce for everyday life, developed through research and practice in Nagano Prefecture. In the first year, we began by building a warehouse just for soy sauce, and made it all the way to completion.
About ten months from preparation to pressing
Preparation takes place every year around March to April. For the 2017 batch, more than 30 members gathered and worked koji and salt together by hand, preparing two barrels, about 60 liters. Children and adults did it side by side. From there, we turn the mash over from top to bottom as we nurture it for about ten months.
The finished soy sauce is ready around January to February of the following year. For the pressing on February 20, 2022, we began preparing at 7 a.m. on a cold morning. Pressing requires a large amount of hot water, so we started by boiling water in a hagama pot over a wood fire. The pressing depends on guidance from a skilled "presser," and since the beginning we have had the help of "Gengenoharappa" in Komono, Mie Prefecture, who come with their handmade tools.
It continues because it is delicious
Every year, around 20 to 35 people take part as the "Soy Sauce Club," and before we knew it, six years had passed. The reason it lasts is, after all, that it tastes good. It is an additive-free soy sauce where you know every ingredient, with a depth of flavor like a dashi soy sauce.
Making soy sauce is not something you can do alone. We gather with the seasons, work with our hands, and share the same flavor a year later. Passing on handcraft also nurtures connections between people. I believe a farm in the middle of town can be a place that inherits such skills of daily life.