Making Naturally Brewed Soy Sauce

Kikkoman Soy Sauce is brewed slowly and aged for full flavor like a fine wine, just as soy sauce has been made for 2,500 years.

The result is a soy sauce that is both remarkably complex and extraordinarily simple: complex because it contains more than 300 individual flavor components and well-balanced amino acids that give it a distinctive flavor and bouquet; and simple because it is made from just four natural ingredients—water, wheat, soybeans and salt—transformed through fermentation.

At Kikkoman, the soy sauce production process begins with the selection of the finest soybeans and wheat. Next, a proprietary culture starter, or seed mold, is introduced and the mixture is allowed to mature. The resulting culture, or koji, is then transferred to fermentation tanks, where it is mixed with a brine solution to produce a mash called moromi. Then Kikkoman adds the most important ingredient of all: time. Despite advances in technology, the fermentation process simply cannot be hurried. It takes six months for the full flavor, color and aroma of the soy sauce to develop.

Once fermentation is complete, the matured mash is pressed to extract the raw soy sauce, which is then refined, treated with heat and packaged under the Kikkoman brand name.