Collaboration brews are always a fun opportunity to creating something special, use ingredients and techniques that aren't common and step upside your comfort zone. While enjoying some libations with Jared from Southen Grist we were reminiscing about "Kumori" a rice lager they created back in 2019 with our mutual friend Byron from Proper Sake. Six days before brewing this beer 400lbs of sushi grade rice was put through a six step mash and cereal cooked, then cooled down and inoculated with Proper Sake's proprietary strain of Koji. The Koji went to work converting the starches in the rice into fermentable sugar. After the koji fermentation was complete, domestic pilsner malt was mashed on top of the koji rice and put through a further 4 step mash and short single decoction. Boiled and gently hopped French grown Strisselspalt. Once boiled and whirlpool the wort was split into two fermentation tanks, one pitched with our preferred German lager yeast, the other pitched with Byron's preferred sake yeast banked and propagated by our friends at Bootleg Biology. After fermentation the two different beers were lagered in french oak ex-wine barrels and blended together before packaging. The resulting beer is heavily inspired by Yamahai-Style Sake, where the sake brewers naturally inoculate it with lactic acid producing bacteria. Heiko-Fukuhakko displays subtle notes of green apple, pear, steamed rice, is slightly tart and finishes astonishing dry