Tokubetsu Honjozo (1.8 L)

When master brewer Ohara Akira applied Hiroshima's ginjo soft-water techniques to Kochi's even softer nansui — water drawn from the subterranean Nahari River filtering through the ancient Yanase cedar forest — he solved a problem most brewers avoided entirely: nansui was long considered incompatible with quality sake production. Hamakawa Shoten, registered in 1904 and still family-owned into its fifth generation, sits on a narrow coastal strip in Tano-cho, Aki District, wedged between the Pacific and the Yanase mountains — the easternmost brewery in Kochi Prefecture.

That ultra-soft water drives low-temperature, extended moromi fermentation built via sandan jikomi (three-stage mash addition over approximately 25–30 days), coaxing delicate aromatics that harder water would suppress. The house relies on Kochi Prefecture's proprietary AA-41 yeast, an isoamyl acetate-forward strain that generates pronounced melon and banana lift — unusual in a Honjozo tier, where most producers default to neutral, workhorse yeasts. The result defies the typical Kochi dry-lean archetype: bone-dry in structure yet soft on the palate, with a focused aromatic register that belongs to a higher classification. At 1.8 L, this is the brewery's everyday-table format — the same house philosophy, scaled for the izakaya pour.