The Art and Taste of Tradition In this section of eSake.com, we explore twelve small family-run brewers. Enjoy your tour. Just click any brewer name to learn about that brewer. Sake lovers will soon discover that the taste of the final product has much to do with the water, the rice, and the brewing techniques used by the brewer. Each brewer exports sake to the USA. Click here to buy their sake in the USA. Sake Brewers in Japan There are about 1,400 sake breweries (kura) in Japan today. Thirty years ago, however, there were some 3,500 kura. Among existing brewers, the largest can brew about 77,000 kiloliters a year (about 100 million wine-sized bottles of sake) owing to large computer-controlled factories that mass produce sake year round. In Japan, only 20 or so brewers produce sake on such a large scale. The remaining small-scale Japanese kura brew only in the winter and mostly by hand. For that reason, their output is limited to 200 to 1000 kiloliters per year per brewery. Some kura brew even less than that. This web site is devoted entirely to small family-run sake brewers who make only premium sake.