Saijo Sake Brewery Street

This guide to Saijo Sake Brewery Street in Hiroshima follows Senzaburo Miura, born in 1847 in nearby Akitsu, and the soft, mineral-poor well water that spoiled batch after batch of sake for the seasonal brewers who lived and worked along this street each winter. Through the 1890s he walked the vats at night with a thermometer, testing a slower way of coaxing the mash along that everyone else had written off as useless, recording every temperature and hour in a notebook. Walk this street today past the red brick chimneys and white namako walls of the seven breweries still working here.