Chiyomusubi Honjozo ‘Oni-No-Shitaburui’ Cho Karkuchi (500 ml)

Chiyomusubi has operated from Sakaiminato City — the northwestern tip of Tottori Prefecture, facing the Sea of Japan — since 1865, with the Okasora family steering a program built around the near-extinct Gōriki rice that nearly disappeared by the mid-1950s. Oni-No-Shitaburui ('the demon's tongue trembles') is the brewery's entry-level honjozo, deliberately positioned as a daily-pour expression rather than a showcase cuvée, yet brewed with the same spring water hauled by hand from Daito Town in Shimane Prefecture — a three-hour round trip each collection day — drawn from the foot of the Chugoku Mountains and prized for its slightly soft mineral profile. Rice is polished in-house; the honjozo grade permits a small addition of distilled alcohol, which here is calibrated to drive the SMV to +12, placing this firmly in chō-karakuchi (super-dry) territory. Fermentation follows the brewery's low-temperature, hand-cooled protocol, with steamed rice cooled manually to ensure uniform core temperature — a labour-intensive step more typical of premium ginjo production than a 500 ml everyday bottle. The expression is filtered and pasteurised for shelf stability, bottled at approximately 15% ABV. What distinguishes it within the honjozo category is the application of Chiyomusubi's full fermentation discipline — proprietary yeast selection, extended karashi resting period for the shubo — to a format priced for nightly consumption, producing a dryness that is structural rather than thin.