Smoked shoyu?! I can't stop putting it on everything. Made with sakura (cherrywood) smoked soy beans, the smoke flavor is bold so you only need a few drops to really impact the flavor of any dish. It's packed in a squeeze bottle so it's really easy to just pour a few drops over your food. The shoyu itself is cleverly packed in an airtight bladder pack inside the plastic bottle so there is minimal oxidation as you use it. As always, I keep my shoyu in the fridge to best preserve the flavors though.

Yugeta Shoyu Brewery's family motto is 'we must treat each customer with honesty' and this philosophy permeates all of the processes they use to make each product. They start with ground water at the base of the Chichibu Mountain Chain, soy beans grown organically in Aomori, wheat grown organically in Saitama, air-dried sea salt. Their shoyu is fermented and aged for a year in open pine wood vats, some of which have been used to make shoyu since the late 1800's, that are teaming with 300+ bacterium needed to make rich, complex shoyu. Yugeta-san says his staff's role is only to stir the brew occasionally and that the lion's share of the work is done by the microorganisms. This slow brewing and aging process means they never need to add alcohol or chemical seasonings to preserve or enhance the taste. 

From Sakado City, Saitama, Japan