Traditional sake brewers in Japan use centuries-old brewing methods.

The popularity of Japan's national drink is growing in Europe. However, despite many exports being mass-produced, a few family-owned breweries use a slow, painstaking process that they claim produces the purest "Kimoto" sake.

Hideharu Ohta will not take any shortcuts. He is the tenth epoch of his family to run the Daishichi Sake Brewery, which is based in the Fukushima court town of Nihonmatsu.

Ohta insists on using the same method for making Japan's rice-based national drink that his forefathers used when they established the brewery in 1752.

The "Kimoto" method is slower, more labor-intensive, and more expensive in the end, but purists say the quality of the sake is like clear as the liquid itself.

Even though Kimoto sake accounts for only a tiny portion of the sake produced in Japan each year, it is gaining popularity in other countries, including Germany.

"My ancestors came to this component of Japan in the 1640s and opened the brewery a few years later using the only technique available at the time, known as Kimoto," Ohta explained to DW.

"Originally, sake was only available to priests also nobles, but in the early Edo period [1603-1867], it was sold to commoners, also the market expanded significantly," he explained.

Because the government relied heavily on alcohol taxes, it encouraged manufacturers to adopt new technology to produce sake much faster and in larger quantities.

Ohta's grandfather produced a batch after being prompted by the government to do so but immediately discarded it because the taste and quality fell far short of what Daishichi drinkers would expect, he said.

The laborious and time-consuming yeast preparation required to cause fermentation is necessary to produce Kimoto sake.

The "yamaoroshi" method entails repeatedly mixing the rice mash with long wooden paddles to extract the most robust and efficient yeasts. From start to finish, the all process takes about 30 days.

On the other hand, Modern sake typically uses industrially produced lactic acid that acts faster, with bottling completed in just 20 days.