Can you tell us about Moromi and its mission?

At Moromi, we specialize in handcrafted soy sauce, miso, and fermented hot sauce. We’re dedicated to developing unique and flavorful food ingredients that help home and professional cooks create distinctive meals for their families and guests. Our handcrafted seasonings are based on traditional fermentation techniques using koji and our natural microbiome to transform a variety of local ingredients into our unique sauces, seasonings, and condiments. 

How did Moromi get started?

I started traveling to Japan almost 40 years ago doing business with Japanese auto companies, and it transformed my view of the world. Of course, traveling in Japan gave me the opportunity to enjoy the amazing cuisine. Back in the US, I realized that many stores only carry one or two types of soy sauce and those tend to be the more industrial, high volume sauces, not the small artisanal soy sauces I was familiar with in Japan. My question was: What makes a great soy sauce? I began to study and experiment. I was making soy sauce out of my house and I asked a chef friend to try it and give me feedback and he ended up putting it on his menu at the best restaurant in our area, with my name on it. I was happy, but I also knew I could improve. 

After researching Japanese artisanal soy sauce makers, I wrote a letter to the CEO’s of 15 small soy sauce makers and asked them if they would be willing to talk to me about making soy sauce. Of the 15, three of them said yes, and I went to Japan to meet them. Mr. Kyosuke Iida, President of Chiba Shoyu, has become my very good friend and mentor and I’ve learned so much about soy sauce making from him and his talented team. Over the years, I’ve been back to visit Chiba Shoyu many times and Iida san and his team have visited me here at my brewery. I’m continuing to learn and refine my craft a little each day thanks to his kind assistance.

What inspires your craft, and what is the company’s philosophy?

As a chemist by trade, mixing things together is an occupational hazard. I started experimenting and studying the art of soy sauce making in search of the flavors of artisanal soy sauce in Japan. Our philosophy is simply to make the most flavorful soy sauce we can.

How has the local environment influenced your flavors and techniques? What inspires your limited edition flavors, and collaborations with local businesses (like your shoyu ice cream)? 

Mystic and southeastern Connecticut has an incredibly vibrant food community. My business partner, Chef James Wayman, was my first customer when he put my soy sauce on his menu at Oyster Club years ago and it changed the trajectory of my soy sauce making. Nowadays we regularly participate in collaborations with chefs across the county and have created a number of seasonally inspired soy sauces incorporating kelp, mushrooms, cayenne peppers, and ginger to create these little pops of flavor and culinary inspiration. James and his restaurants; Nana’s Mystic, Nana’s Westerly, and The River Bar Westerly, incorporate Moromi soy sauces into creative dishes every week as do many other local chefs. I’ve had shoyu ice cream while traveling in Japan so it was fun to approach local ice cream entrepreneur Colin Desmarais, owner of Mystic Drawbridge Ice Cream, with the concept. His Sweet and Salty Shoyu Ice Cream has been a huge hit. In addition, I’ve been working with local farms to grow peppers, wheat, soybeans, kelp, and mushrooms for our sauces. Last year we did a collaboration with Jack Algiere at Stone Barns Center for Food & Agriculture to make soy sauce from an heirloom black soybean that originated in Japan and was brought to the US in the early ‘70’s. It was so much fun to see and taste how this soy sauce evolved during the fermentation. The result was a stunning meaty soy sauce bursting with umami. We’re currently brewing another soy sauce using Jack’s 2024 Nash rye that we expect to be bottled this fall. 

Can you walk us through your shoyu making process? What traditional techniques do you use, and what makes Moromi stand out? 

Soy sauce making varies by country and region. Personally, I’ve focused on Japanese style soy sauces because that’s what I’m most familiar with. Soy sauce making in Japan is a relatively recent adaptation of fermented bean pastes and sauces that were being made for millennia in China. By recent, I mean 771 years ago when in 1254, a buddhist monk first brought samples of fermented bean pastes (miso) to Japan. As miso ferments, a liquid layer known as tamari (meaning puddle in Japanese) is formed. The Japanese adapted, modified, and evolved the technology to create what we now recognize as Japanese koikuchi style soy sauce. This process involves cooking soybeans and roasting wheat and then inoculating this with a mold called Aspergillus oryzae. The resulting koji is then combined with brine to create a mash (moromi means mash in Japanese) and then slowly fermenting the mash in barrels before pressing and bottling. I follow this basic process here at Moromi utilizing whole organic soybeans and wheat. Soy sauce made from whole organic soybeans has much more depth of flavor than soy sauces made from defatted soy grits or hydrolyzed soy protein. Of course whole organic soybeans are much more expensive than defatted soy beans (a by-product of industrial soybean oil production) or chemically produced soy aminos. In my view, industrialization of mass produced soy sauces has resulted in a trading off flavor to lower costs, so I’m focused on creating flavor without cutting corners. I like to describe the flavor profile of my soy sauce as being more like a chord than a single note. 

In a word - joy. The joy of experiencing a beautiful, memorable flavor. 

How does the company incorporate sustainable practices into its production? 

When I started this business, I didn’t have much of a local supply chain developed and bought from whoever would sell to a little unknown soy sauce maker. Now we buy most of our crops locally and we source organic ingredients for all our products. All of our soy sauces are packaged in recyclable glass bottles and I’m able to minimize waste by cycling shoyu lees into my garden as a soil enhancement. I’m pretty proud of my tomatoes and peppers. 

What is a typical day like for your Moromi team? 

I live with my other business partner, my wife, children’s author Debbi Michiko Florence. We’re up at 4:30 to let the dogs out and then sit down at the kitchen table to review our work day. I review orders and create the day's invoices, shipping labels, and catch up on correspondence before heading off to Moromi. Typically we’re cooking in the morning and packing orders. Our barrels get a stir every week so there’s a daily ritual of stirring barrels of fermenting moromi (it’s my exercise routine). Some days we’re pasteurizing and filtering soy sauce and other days we’ll be bottling and labeling. Afternoons are typically for cleaning up the mess we made that morning! I also do quite a few in-store tastings for customers on weekends. 

Where do you see Moromi in 10 years, and how do you hope to grow?

I want to be focused on creating the most flavorful soy sauce we can. Everything else flows from that. Thank you so much for inviting me to join you on your blog.