Kayashima Sake Brewery Cold Storehouse (Former Brewhouse)

What the Kayashima Sake Brewery Cold Storehouse is

The Kayashima Sake Brewery Cold Storehouse (Former Brewhouse) (萱島酒造冷蔵蔵（旧醸造所）, Kayashima Shuzō Reizōgura) is a single-storey earthen-walled storehouse built in 1894 at Kayashima Sake Brewery in Tsunai, Kunisaki City, Oita Prefecture, and was registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on January 16, 1998. It has a tiled roof and a building area of 198 m².

The name in brackets is the building's biography in two words. It went up as a brewhouse, a place where sake was actually made, and later became a place to keep it cool. The Agency for Cultural Affairs records that the Kayashima Cold Storehouse has served as the brewery's refrigerated store since 1929.

Rice husks packed between two walls

The Cold Storehouse measures 5.5 by 11 ken; taking 1 ken as about 1.8 meters, that is roughly 10 by 20 meters. Its outer shell is a Dozo-zukuri storehouse, a timber frame buried under thick coats of clay and plaster, which already resists heat well.

When the building was converted, the brewery added a second skin inside. According to the official description, the interior walls were rebuilt as double timber walls with rice husks packed into the cavity. Husks, the chaff left after threshing rice, were something a brewery had in abundance every season, and their trapped air makes a serviceable insulator. So the Kayashima Sake Brewery Cold Storehouse keeps its sake cool with clay on the outside and a layer of its own raw material's by-product on the inside: a practical answer worked out with what was at hand.

The brewery's own outline of its process explains why that matters. After pressing, the sake is pasteurized and laid down as unblended stock, then blended, diluted and pasteurized again before bottling. Temperature swings during storage change the flavor, so a building that holds a steady temperature is part of the product.

Why the Cold Storehouse was registered

The Kayashima Cold Storehouse was registered for contributing to the historic landscape of the country. The official description calls it the oldest building on the brewery site and a building of real value for understanding how sake was made there.

There is a wrinkle. The Former Muromae, also dated 1894, is described in its own entry as the oldest building too, and the database gives no way to tell which came first.

The sources also disagree on details. The national database places the Cold Storehouse west of the West Storehouse and gives a frontage of 5.5 ken; Kunisaki City's list says west of the Nakagura and 6.5 ken. This article follows the national database.

Seeing the Kayashima Sake Brewery Cold Storehouse

The Kayashima Sake Brewery Cold Storehouse stands toward the west of the site and appears to remain in working use for storage, so the interior is closed; in a building whose whole job is holding temperature, every opening of the door counts. Whether you can view the exterior, and from how close, is a question for the staff at the SAKE GALLERY Tohzai shop on site or for the brewery by phone (+81-978-72-1181).

If you do get a look, compare it with its neighbors. As a single-storey building it sits well below the two-storey brewing storehouse and Nakagura of the 1910s, a useful reminder of how modest the 1894 brewery was before its expansion.