Written by Mika Tanimoto, Owner-Bartender, Bar Little Happiness — Hiroshima’s specialist whisky & rum bar with 1,000+ bottles
When Kameda Distillery’s founder was deciding between wooden washbacks and stainless steel for his fermentation vessels, he did what any good former pharmaceutical MR would do: he ran a controlled experiment.
He installed both types. He mashed under identical conditions. He compared the results systematically. And then he made a decision based on evidence.
The evidence was clear. Wooden washbacks were the answer.
Why Wood?
Stainless steel fermentation tanks are the default choice for modern distilleries: they are easy to clean, consistent in their behaviour, and require less maintenance. Wooden washbacks are slower, harder to sterilise, and need careful management. They also produce a fundamentally different fermentation environment — one in which lactic acid bacteria, unable to survive in sterile stainless, can establish themselves alongside the primary yeast.
It is this lactic fermentation that Tsunoda-shacho was seeking. Extended fermentation times at Kameda allow lactic bacteria to develop fully, producing the esters and complex flavours that translate — after distillation and maturation — into the tropical fruit richness that makes Kameda’s spirit so distinctive.
The new make I tasted at that trade event had notes of mango, passionfruit, and peach so vivid they seemed almost impossible in a whisky spirit. Now I understand why.
The Narrow Middle Cut
Distillation at Kameda follows the same philosophy of quality over efficiency. The middle cut — the fraction of the distillation run that contains the most desirable flavour compounds — is taken narrowly. This means more of the run is discarded as foreshots and feints than at a distillery optimising for volume. What remains is cleaner, finer, and — Tsunoda-shacho would argue — more honest about what the spirit can be.
He summarises his approach to fermentation and distillation with a phrase that has stayed with me: “Eighty to ninety percent of whisky quality is determined in fermentation.” The still, in his view, is a precision scissors — its job is to cut away what you do not want and preserve exactly what you do.
Kameda’s scissors are very sharp.
Yeast and Timing
Beyond the washback material and fermentation length, Tsunoda-shacho uses higher-than-standard yeast pitching rates to build body into the wash before distillation begins. The combination — more yeast, more time, wood rather than steel — produces a spirit that carries density and length even in its youngest state.
The maturation that follows this foundation has barely begun. Kameda is a young distillery. But the quality of what they are putting into barrels suggests that in five, ten, fifteen years, this is a distillery that serious whisky drinkers will be speaking about very differently.
Read the full Japanese column: little-happiness.jp/columns/kameda-distillery-visit-vol2/
Bar Little Happiness | Hiroshima, Japan
Rum & Whisky specialists | 1,000+ bottles | English menu available
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