ISSUE 011  ·  OCTOBER 15, 2026

It's hiyaoroshi season: the autumn sakes, rested all summer, are landing on shelves. True Sake in San Francisco says it has a record number of them in stock. Sake 101 explains what they are.

Out West, Gekkeikan has refreshed its tasting room in Folsom, California, with new windows onto its Japanese garden. It's in Last Call with five other things to do or buy before mid-November.

This week: Florida's sake brewery, a $5 can from Brooklyn, and how Japan's newest brewers get around a licensing freeze.

At Sake Block two weeks ago, plenty of people learned for the first time that Florida has a sake brewery. Then they met the people who run it.

Shōjō's Dojo is Florida's first and only sake brewery, run by Haidar Hachem and Mari Orozco, a husband-and-wife team who are both Miami natives. He brews, and by the brewery's count he's one of only nine Masters of Sake in the world. She's a sake sommelier and the voice of the brand.

The name comes from the shōjō, a sake-loving spirit from Japanese folklore. Haidar describes it as "always on the beach, always laughing, and always drunk," which he figured fit Miami.

Their first home was a warehouse hideout with arcade games, a pool table and foosball. That chapter has closed, and for now they're a brewery on the move: brewing inside another brewery, popping up around town, and hunting for what Mari calls "a forever home."

At Sake Block they poured a doburoku, the thick, cloudy sake that never gets filtered. Haidar will tell you it's the only truly unfiltered sake there is (more in The Explainer). They also poured a sake cosmopolitan, the only cocktail of the night. "Right now, we're brewing true to style," Mari told Coral Gables Magazine, "but eventually we do want to have fun." From where we stood, they already are.

To drink it, catch a pop-up, DM them, or order it at any OMAKAI restaurant in South Florida. Follow @shojosdojo for where they'll be; Thursday nights it's usually Soi Thai.

SPARKLING JUNMAI DAIGINJO  ·  NEW YORK, USA

This week's bottle is a can. Brooklyn Kura, the brewery that sent American sake back to Japan (our issue 003), took its top-shelf sake, added bubbles and a splash of yuzu, the fragrant Japanese citrus, and put it in a can.

Think sake spritz: lighter than a glass of wine and made for the porch. Beau Timken of True Sake calls it "a very cool backbone of Junmai Daiginjo with a very fun, light, and playful yuzu tingle," and pitches it for a picnic, the pool or cocktail hour.

If you've only had sake warm from a carafe, a cold, fizzy, citrusy can is about as different a first sip as you can get.

Where to buy: Union Square Wines, $4.99 a can or $17.96 for a four-pack, checked October 15, 2026.

Our very first issue covered the wall: Japan effectively stopped issuing new licenses to brew sake. The law lets the tax authority refuse a license to keep supply and demand in balance, and for sake that refusal is close to automatic. In August a Tokyo law firm still called it bedrock regulation. Japan's newest brewers have found three ways around it.

Doburoku. Doburoku is sake that's never pressed or filtered, so the rice solids stay in the glass. Even cloudy nigori goes through a coarse filter; doburoku skips it. It's what Shōjō's Dojo poured at Sake Block. Since 2003, special zones in Japan have let farmers who run inns or farm restaurants brew it, usually from their own rice, without meeting the usual minimum volume. Tōno, in Iwate, was the first. SAKE Street counts more than 200 zones today.

Craft sake. Add fruit, hops or herbs to a sake mash and it's legally no longer sake, so it can be made under an easier license for "other brewed alcohol." Ine to Agave, in Oga, Akita, brews with agave syrup. Haccoba, in Fukushima, uses hops. In 2022 they and four others formed the Craft Sake Brewery Association.

Export only. Since April 2021, a new brewery can get a real sake license if every bottle leaves the country. Nekka, in Fukushima, was first, in May 2021.

Which is why the most exciting new Japanese sake brewers are making things you can't technically call sake.

Hiyaoroshi is autumn sake. It's brewed in winter, pasteurized once, then left to rest through the summer. In autumn it goes out without the second pasteurization most sake gets, so it tends to taste a little rounder and more settled than the same sake fresh in spring. Release traditionally starts around September 9. True Sake, which has 16 in stock and more on the way, calls them "Fall Draft Sakes." If a label says hiyaoroshi, it's only around for a few months.