Overview: Yasato Distillery stands on a hilltop overlooking Mt. Tsukuba in Ishioka, Ibaraki Prefecture, Japan. Dedicated to crafting whiskies using locally sourced ingredients, the facility is part of Kiuchi Sake Brewery Co., which also produces Hitachino Nest Beer and Nipponia craft beer brands.
The Full Story
The distillery’s roots trace back to 1823, when the village headman of Konosu in the county of Naka began brewing sake. About 170 years later, a 1994 revision to the Liquor Tax Law opened the door to beer production on a small scale, leading to more than 200 new breweries nationwide and creating a craft beer boom. Hitachino Nest Beer went on sale in 1996 from Kiuchi Sake Brewery Co., the direct descendant of the brewery started by Gihei Kiuchi.
In 2007, Kiuchi Sake Brewery collaborated with local farmers to revive a barley variety that had not been grown since around 1960. Nipponia, another craft beer brand produced using all-domestic ingredients — the malt, hops and Yamada-Nishiki sake rice — became popular not only in Japan but overseas as well. Whisky production began in 2016 initially using imported malt before switching to locally grown barley from a malting factory built three years prior to August 2026. The distillery was founded in 2020 by Kiuchi Sake Brewery.
Kyoshiro Imaizumi of Yasato Distillery stated, “Making sake should go hand in hand with agricultural tradition and culture.” He added, “We stick to using barley and rice grown in Ibaraki Prefecture not only for our beer but also our whiskies.”
Production & Profile
Pot stills for whiskey built in Scotland have been installed in Kiuchi Sake Brewery’s Yasato Distillery. Wort is added to yeast and left for three days inside a stainless fermentation vessel. The wort is then moved to a wooden fermentation vessel for another two days to produce a fermentation broth rich in bacteria that turn sugars into lactic acid. This broth is transferred to pot stills for distillation.
A storage house adjacent to the factory contains barrels for bourbon and sherry, in addition to original barrels made from cherry trees. Currently they have about 5,000 barrels full of liquors and other alcoholic drinks, maturing in accordance with the local climate and without temperature and humidity controls. Since its establishment, the distillery has produced grain whiskies made from rice and wheat grown in the prefecture.
Brand & Industry History
The company has harnessed the knowledge and techniques honed through its beer brewing business for making whisky as well. Normally, the lauter tun and the mash tun are combined into a single vessel, but they have separate tuns, each with its own temperature control, just as they do for making beer. This allows them to increase the volume of yeast and produce a very aromatic wort. Ishioka sits in one of eastern Japan’s richest grain-growing regions and is blessed with ample underflow water from Mt. Tsukuba.
What This Means
“Making sake should go hand in hand with agricultural tradition and culture,” said Kyoshiro Imaizumi of Yasato Distillery. The company started making whisky partly to use barley that didn’t meet the standard for brewing beer. They will continue to take on new challenges in this vast farming area.
Consumer Takeaway
The product lineup includes Hinomaru, Signature 1823 (single malt), Kome (blended), and Sakura Ra. Signature 1823 is the brand’s hallmark single malt whisky and won top prizes at several competitions last year. Kome is a blended whisky with a mild sweetness and solid body, and Sakura Ra is matured in various barrels, such as cherry wood and cherry brandy barrels, and characterized by a sweet, vibrant fragrance. Hinomaru features on Japan’s national flag and embodies the company’s commitment to and pride in using domestic ingredients.
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