Dassai | Yamaguchi Sake Brewery: Tours & Where to Buy

The wooden Kintai Bridge over the Nishiki River in Iwakuni. Arched spans rest on stone piers against green hills — The Kintai Bridge, in Iwakuni, the same city as the Dassai brewery. It is a well-known sight that is easy to include in a trip from Hiroshima.そらみみ／ CC BY-SA 4.0 ／ Wikimedia Commons（長辺1280pxに縮小）

Who will enjoy this brewery

People who are just starting to learn about sake (it is widely available, so it is an easy choice for a first bottle)
People who want to understand the “rice polishing ratio” with their tongue rather than their head
People who want to take a brewery tour in English
People who want to see a traditional industry being remade through technology and data

About Dassai

Dassai (獺祭) is one of the best-known sake names outside Japan. It appears on the lists of restaurants in New York and Paris, and it is widely available abroad.

However, most people are surprised when they see where this sake was born. It is in the mountains of Iwakuni (岩国), Yamaguchi Prefecture. It is a sparsely populated settlement in a valley, nearly an hour by taxi from the nearest Shinkansen (high-speed rail) station. It is not Nada, Fushimi or Niigata, the areas known for producing sake.

In 1984, when the third generation, Sakurai Hiroshi (桜井博志), took over the brewery at the age of 34, sales had fallen to 85% of the previous year, and the brewery was effectively bankrupt. Its cheap sake for the local market was no longer selling. The bet he chose went in the opposite direction. He stopped making ordinary sake and focused only on “junmai daiginjo”: sake made only from rice, rice koji and water, with more than half of the outer part of the rice polished away.

1990: Released Dassai with rice polishing ratios (seimai buai) of 50% and 40%
1992: Released Dassai Migaki Niwari Sanbu (獺祭磨き二割三分), with a rice polishing ratio of 23%. This was an extremely high level of polishing at the time
Late 1990s: The brewery moved into a restaurant business serving locally brewed beer, which failed, and the toji (master brewer) left the brewery. The toji is the person responsible for overseeing all of a brewery’s sake making. From this point, the brewery moved to a system in which employees make sake based on data, instead of relying on a team of seasonal craftsmen
Year-round brewing: The brewery is air-conditioned and brews all year, not only in winter
2023: Began brewing DASSAI BLUE in New York State, USA
June 2025: Changed its company name from Asahi Shuzo Co., Ltd. to DASSAI Inc. (株式会社獺祭)

This brewery has chosen, one by one, ways of working that differ from seasonal brewing and a system centered on a toji.

What does “a rice polishing ratio of 23%” mean?

One of the main pieces of production information you can read on a sake label is the rice polishing ratio (seimai buai). It shows how much of the rice grain remains after the outer part is polished away, leaving only the center.

A rice polishing ratio of 23% means that 77% of the rice grain is polished away, and the sake is made only from the remaining 23%.

The outer part of the rice contains a lot of protein and fat. Polishing away more of the outer part lowers that proportion, and this is said to tend to give a clearer taste. However, the taste of sake is determined by many steps, including the rice, koji, yeast, fermentation and storage. It does not mean that the more the rice is polished, the better the sake. Also, the more the rice is polished, the more expensive the raw material becomes, the more easily the grains break, and the longer it takes. The Dassai brewery became famous because it entered this area, which almost no one worked in at the time, and because it produced such sake consistently and in large quantities.

When you drink it, there are aromas like melon or pear, and a surprisingly light and clean feel in the mouth. In its power to make people who are drinking sake for the first time think “sake can be this easy to drink”, Dassai is an easy sake to choose as a starting point.

Visiting the brewery

Brewery tours (booking required; English guide available)

The Dassai brewery is a brewery where you can officially book a brewery tour with an English-speaking guide.

Booking	Tours with a Japanese guide are confirmed instantly through the calendar on the official website (from two months before the tour date until the day before). Tours with an English guide require approval and are confirmed when you receive a confirmation email
Schedule	Twice a day, every day, at 10:00 and 14:00 (Japanese guide)
English guide	A separate slot at 13:00 on weekdays (not held on Saturdays, Sundays, public holidays, the New Year holidays or the summer holidays; separate from the Japanese-guide tours at 10:00 and 14:00). The conditions are revised from time to time, so please check the official page before applying
Duration	About 1 hour
Price	1,000 yen (including a white coat and a souvenir) / tasting is an additional 500 yen
Group size	Up to 5 people per tour
Age	Junior high school students and older
Phone	0827-86-0800 (9:00–17:00)

Notes: You cannot take the tour if you arrive after drinking alcohol. Inside the brewery you change into special shoes, so you need to wear socks. Some places have wet, slippery floors, and some rooms are 10°C or colder. Please avoid strong perfume (it spoils the aroma of the sake). There are stairs to go up and down. Applications from tours, groups and travel agencies are not accepted.

The tour takes place in the huge 12-story head-office brewery. If you go expecting a “traditional wooden sake brewery”, the gap itself becomes an interesting experience.

Dassai Store Head Office Brewery (獺祭ストア本社蔵)

This is the brewery-owned store near the brewery.

Address	〒742-0422 山口県岩国市周東町獺越2128 Open in Google Maps
Opening hours	9:00–17:00 (Monday to Sunday and public holidays)
Phone	0827-86-0800

About the brewery-owned stores: The brewery-owned “Dassai Store Ginza (獺祭ストア銀座)” closed on January 31, 2024. Apart from the head-office brewery, the brewery-owned stores are two stores in Fukuoka (Dassai Tenjin Store and Dassai Store Fukuoka) and the online store (checked on September 30, 2026). There is no brewery-owned store in Tokyo or Kyoto. Stores may change, so please check the official website before visiting.

Getting there

Address: 〒742-0422 山口県岩国市周東町獺越2167-4

Shinkansen + local line + taxi: Tokuyama Station (Shinkansen) → JR Gantoku Line to Suo-Takamori Station, about 40 minutes → taxi, about 15 minutes (estimates as of September 2026)
By air: About 40–60 minutes by car from Iwakuni Kintaikyo Airport
You can also go from Shin-Iwakuni Station, but it involves many transfers, so we recommend going via Tokuyama Station

Travel tip: Iwakuni is close to Hiroshima, so you can plan a trip combining Miyajima and the Atomic Bomb Dome + the Kintai Bridge + Dassai. However, the brewery is far from the city center, so plan on using a rental car or a taxi

Where to buy Dassai’s sake

Dassai is sold at the brewery-owned stores and the official online store, and also at stockists across Japan. There are 891 stockists across Japan, including liquor stores and department stores (checked on September 30, 2026). The list is divided by prefecture and shows each store’s name, address and phone number.

The brewery-owned stores

The store names and addresses are kept in Japanese so that you can show them to a taxi driver or paste them into a map app.

Store	Address	Opening hours
獺祭ストア本社蔵	山口県岩国市周東町獺越2128 Open in Google Maps	Every day (including public holidays) 9:00–17:00
獺祭天神ストア	福岡県福岡市中央区天神2-6-26 Open in Google Maps	12:00–21:00. Closed on Wednesdays. Free tasting every day
獺祭ストア福岡店	福岡県福岡市中央区天神2-5-35 岩田屋本店地下2階 Open in Google Maps	Every day (including public holidays) 10:00–20:00

The brewery-owned store in Tokyo, “Dassai Store Ginza”, closed on January 31, 2024.

The official online store, “Dassai Store WEB (獺祭Store WEB店)“, is a store for customers in Japan, and it cannot be used for resale or for export abroad.

Stockists that are easy to visit during your trip

Here are stockists at major stations, airports and sightseeing spots.