87. Tenryu 100ml

A smooth and sweet Kagoshima sake

This soy sauce has a mellow sweetness, just the right thickness, and a well-balanced richness. It's not just sweet, but has an addictive umami flavor. It's popular as a soy sauce for sashimi with red meat such as tuna and yellowtail.

Ingredients: Amino acid liquid (domestically produced), defatted processed soybeans, salt, wheat, sugars (sugar, glucose fructose liquid sugar), caramel coloring, seasonings (amino acids, etc.), sweeteners (saccharin sodium, licorice, stevia), thickener (xanthan), vitamin B1

Shokunin Shoyu No. 87

Locally rooted soy sauce making

Most of the soy sauce in Kagoshima Prefecture is made in a joint factory, with each company doing the pasteurization and seasoning themselves. When it comes to seasoning, each company has their own unique techniques for how to mix different sweeteners and how many degrees to heat them.

They are receiving an increasing number of requests from restaurants asking if they can recreate the same flavor by pre-seasoning the soy sauce during the preparation work that is done outside of business hours. Generally, there are few takers for such custom-made products unless a certain amount of production is required. "It's the small stores that are struggling, so we want to help them as much as we can. We are also working on improving our production facility so that we can also handle Kagoshima's local dishes, such as pork miso and side dishes," says third-generation owner Yoshinaga Hiroki.

The miso is also used in school lunches, and Yoshinaga says he wants to share the local flavors with children. On the walls of the store are a collection of letters from elementary school students who came to tour the factory, as well as newspaper articles about miso ball-making classes.

Also sold by weight in store

The soy sauce is stored in a jar and sold by weight in the store. A large funnel and ladle are used to pour the soy sauce from the jar into a bottle.

A man who appears to be a neighbor comes into the store with a 1.8L bottle of sake in one hand. He hands the bottle to Yoshinaga, saying, "It's 5 go." Watching him, it's clear that he's pouring more than half the amount of sake into the bottle. 5 go is exactly half the amount of sake in a 1.8L bottle. However, Yoshinaga laughs and says, "It's fine. This is enough."

If you're unsure which sweet soy sauce to go with lean sashimi, try this one

Sweet soy sauce is a very complicated subject. First of all, is the soy sauce light or rich, and is it mildly sweet or very sweet? It's difficult to tell these things just by looking at the ingredients, so it's hard to choose.

If you're trying sweet soy sauce with red meat sashimi for the first time, start with Tenryu, as it has a good balance of richness, moderate sweetness, and thickness. If you prefer a sweeter or stronger flavor, we recommend switching to another sweet soy sauce.

The thick soy sauce enhances the flavor of the avocado.

There are many types of sweet soy sauce, but if you're pairing it with avocado, we recommend a thick, sweet one! The soy sauce clings well to the avocado, and the mellow sweetness doesn't have a strong green smell. Even our staff, who don't usually use sweet soy sauce, praised its compatibility with avocado, saying, "This is great!" It also pairs well with wasabi.