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GOURMET NEWS www.gourmetnews.com n JANUARY 2018 n GOURMET NEWS 7 8 Marukan Expands with New East Coast Brewery By Lorrie Baumann Marukan USA has just opened a new brew- ery in Griffin, Georgia, an Atlanta suburb that will enable the company to double its production of its naturally brewed rice vine- gars and provide more efficient distribution to customers on the East Coast and in Eu- rope. The new facility uses the same propri- etary brewing process that Marukan has been using for the past 43 years in its West Coast brewery in Paramount, California, which will continue to operate and serve customers in the western U.S. The new brewery is a 77,000 square foot facility, with about 50,000 square feet of pur- pose-built production facilities. It's built on a 16-acre piece of land, so that it's ready to be expanded in five or 10 years as demand for Marukan products continues to grow. Its fermenting tanks were imported from Ger- many; some of the brewing equipment came from Japan; and much of it was hand-fabri- cated within the region. "Our owner, Denzaemon Sasada, in Japan has two plants near Osaka and Tokyo sup- plying Japan and the Pacific Rim. The plant in California had been supplying all of North America, but Sasada's vision was to have a brewery on both coasts, to serve their respec- tive markets and be both eastward- and west- ward-facing for exports. This will fill U.S. market demand and enable a bit more growth into Europe," said Marukan USA President Jon Tanklage. The new brewery began operation with test runs after receiving final inspection re- ports in July, according to Tanklage. "When we get that fine-tuned, we will start produc- ing batches, storing them in tanks and aging them," he said. The first vinegar out of the plant is due to reach the market immedi- ately after a grand opening ceremony planned for October. Those first batches are likely to go out to companies that make high-quality salad dressings, particularly those concerned about their clean labels, Tanklage said, although he declined to men- tion any brand names. "The ones that are picking up the best ingredients are coming to us," he said. "We're the only nonGMO- verified rice vinegar out there, and we will offer organic rice vinegar from the Griffin brewery as well." A Slow-Brewed Process The vinegar is made with a slow-brewed process that starts with high-quality sushi rice grown in California, where warm days and cool nights provide the perfect conditions for growing the best short-grain rice, Tanklage said. The rice is inoculated with a koji culture from Japan and then fermented slowly into sake. "We do small batches and time," Tan- klage said. "We're trying to achieve a certain flavor, a certain taste, and rushing it won't help that.... We use some secret techniques to make sure it doesn't go too quickly." The sake that comes out of that first fer- mentation is aged and then inoculated with the Marukan mother vinegar. That mother originated in Japan, where Marukan has two breweries, one near Osaka and one near Tokyo. By now, though, it's undergone so many generations in the U.S. that it certainly can be regarded as authentically American, even though it makes a vinegar that tastes very similar to the Marukan vinegar made in Japan, Tanklage said. "We really believe we make the world's finest rice vinegar. That's our tag, and we stand behind that," he added. "Smoothest, mildest and the most flavor." After it's second fermentation, the sake has become a vinegar that just has to be di- luted to table strength. Its undiluted strength is about 10 percent acetic acid, the chemical name for the main component of vinegar, and it's diluted to a standard 4.3 percent acid- ity with water purified by reverse osmosis to ensure the purest possible product. Water's the only added ingredient in Marukan's Gen- uine Brewed Rice Vinegar, which is easily identified on the grocer's shelf by its green label and bottle cap. The company also makes an organic ver- sion of the Genuine Brewed Rice Vinegar as well as Marukan Seasoned Gourmet Rice Vinegar, which has some added sugar and salt that drop the acidity slightly and con- tribute a sweet-and-sour flavor. "Use it any time you're cooking rice, a little bit just to season the rice," Tanklage said. "Add it at the end when it's completely cooked and cool- ing. Every sushi bar that you've ever had sushi at adds rice vinegar to their rice before they prepare the sushi." Drawing on a Long Tradition The new brewery is the latest event in a com- pany history that stretches back to 1649, when Marukan began as the first purveyor of rice vinegar in Japan. In those days, vinegar made from sake was thought of as a food preservative that also gave the food a pleas- ant sour flavor. Eventually, people started using it as a way to make mackerel last long enough to be transported safely from the Japanese coast to the inland, so that people in the mountainous areas of Japan could also enjoy eating it. They'd soak rice with the vinegar and stuff it into mackerel to preserve it for the journey, thus beginning a long Japanese tradition of saba sushi. The sushi rolls we know today, ni- giri sushi and even poke bowls all come out of that tradition of wrapping food together with vinegar-soaked rice to help preserve it. Rice vinegar first came to the U.S. as a product sold to those familiar with Japanese culinary traditions, but over time, it's been adopted into the American culinary lexicon because its mild flavor makes it desirable as an ingredient in marinades and salad dressings as well as in Asian fusion dishes like a Chi- nese chicken salad or a seared ahi tuna salad. "I hate to think of dressing a Chinese chicken salad with anything other than Marukan Sea- soned Gourmet. You've got all that beautiful cabbage and the expensive chicken and the mandarin oranges," Tanklage said. "You never want to take a beautiful salad that peo- ple put their heart and soul into and finish it off with a lesser vinegar with a harsh flavor." Most recently, the Marukan rice vinegars are sought after by both fine-dining chefs and the food processors who are blending them into commercial salad dressings to con- tribute flavor without adding a lot of sugar or salt. The Marukan vinegars are also val- ued because they're verified to contain no genetically modified ingredients and for their extremely short ingredient lists that make it easy to verify that the dressing is gluten free. "Rice vinegar is the perfect vinegar. It gives you that sour background note," Tanklage said. "Oftentimes what's missing to bring all the flavors together is a little acidity or sour- ness to balance the other flavors in a dish." For more information, visit Marukan USA at www.ricevinegar.com, which has been re- cently revamped with recipes and ideas as well as a blog. Find the company also on Facebook, which is a great place for recipes, stories about the chefs who are using it and creative ways to use the product. Prairie Farms Hauls Home Awards from Dairy Competitions Prairie Farms Dairy took home dozens of awards from the 2017 World Dairy Expo Product Competition. The awards ceremony was held on October 3 at the 2017 World Dairy Expo in Madison, Wisconsin. Prairie Farms competed in nearly 30 cat- egories and won 40 awards. The awards in- cluded 14 first place championship trophies, 11 second place medallions, and 15 third place medallions. The big win in- cluded six perfect scores for salted caramel milk, sea salt caramel milk, white milk (two trophies), chocolate milk and whip- ping cream. Prairie Farms swept the com- petition in three categories: southwest dip, low-fat chocolate milk, and fat-free choco- late milk. "To earn prestigious World Dairy Expo Awards, a dairy company must offer top- quality products. Prairie Farms competed in 27 categories and won 40 awards, that's nearly 50 percent of total category awards and more than any of our competitors. Our performance was outstanding in all cate- gories," said Rebecca Leinenbach, Vice President of Marketing and Communica- tions for Prairie Farms. "We serve millions of customers each day who deserve the highest quality products available, and dur- ing the past 75 years they have counted on Prairie Farms' commitment to delivering the best of the best from our farms to their tables." The World Dairy Expo Championship Dairy Product Contest, sponsored by the Wisconsin Dairy Products Association, is the only judging contest of its kind in North America. More than 1,200 products were en- tered from all over the country in 79 contest classes, including cheese, fluid milk, yogurt, butter, sour cream, dairy dips, ice cream, cot- tage cheese and whey products. Prairie Farms results from 2017 state fair competitions in Illinois, Missouri and Ken- tucky were equally impressive. Over 150 red, white and blue ribbons were awarded in numerous categories. New this year for Prairie Farms were entries in the Illinois State Fair Cheese Competition where the company's cheese division won blue ribbons for cream cheese, blue cheese, and gor- gonzola. The Missouri win included five blue rosette ribbons, which are the highest- ranking ribbons, for sour cream, ice cream, yogurt, fat-free milk and iced coffee. In Ken- tucky, six gold medals were awarded for but- ter, cottage cheese, chocolate milk, buttermilk, low-fat and reduced-fat milk. New Flavors of Graziers Whole Milk Grass-Fed Yogurts Sierra Nevada Cheese Company has intro- duced two new flavors to its Graziers line of Whole Milk Grass-Fed Yogurts. Mixed Berry and Lemon join a line that already in- cludes Plain, Vanilla, Strawberry and Vanilla in 6-ounce cups and Plain and Vanilla in 24- ounce cups. The milk that's used to make the Gra- ziers Yogurts, like the milk that makes the company's Graziers Cheeses, which are offered in Raw Medium Cheddar, Raw Monterey Jack, Raw Sharp Cheddar and Raw Jalapeno Jack, is sourced from north- ern California family dairy farms that have their cows – an average of about 100 cows per farm – on pasture for about 335 days a year. The farmers use intensive ro- tational grazing to keep the cattle moving from one small lot to another every day to ensure that the cows are always eating grasses with the highest nutritional quality to provide optimal nutritional value for the milk they produce. Cows fed on this kind of intensively man- aged pasture produce milk that's much higher in conjugated linoleic acid, an Omega-6 fatty acid that's thought to have positive health effects, than the milk from grain-fed cows. This kind of pasture man- agement has also been shown to benefit the environment by reducing soil erosion and increasing carbon sequestration, the ability of the soil to capture and hold car- bon so that it is not re- leased as carbon diox- ide, which is a greenhouse gas. The Graziers yogurts are made from whole milk that's non-homog- enized, so that a layer of cream forms on the top of every cup. The fruit is organic, in keep- ing with the company's clean ingredients philosophy. For more information, call 530.934.8660 or go to www.sierranevadacheese.com.

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