Kanosuke is a name that keeps turning up in conversations I have with buyers and blenders across Scotland and beyond. The distillery, situated on the southern coast of Kyushu, has been making waves since it started releasing spirit, and this Hioki Pot Still Single Grain expression is one of the more interesting bottles to land on my desk recently. At £94.95 and bottled at a punchy 51% ABV, it sits in that curious space where Japanese craft whisky meets a grain category that most drinkers associate with bulk Scotch production. Kanosuke clearly has other ideas.
Single grain whisky is, frankly, underappreciated. In Scotland, it's the workhorse of the blending industry — made in massive column stills, valued for efficiency over character. What Kanosuke has done here is flip that logic entirely. The "Hioki Pot Still" designation tells you everything: this grain whisky was distilled in pot stills, which is an unusual and deliberately labour-intensive choice. It's a statement of intent. They're not trying to produce neutral filler spirit. They want texture, weight, and personality from their grain, and the decision to bottle at cask strength reinforces that ambition.
As a NAS release, there's no age statement to lean on, which means Kanosuke is betting on the quality of the liquid itself to justify the price tag. That takes confidence. The 51% ABV suggests this hasn't been heavily diluted, and you can expect a more robust, concentrated experience than you'd get from a typical 40% grain whisky. This is grain whisky that wants to be taken seriously, and honestly, it deserves to be.
Tasting Notes
I'll be upfront — detailed tasting notes for this specific bottling are scarce, and I'd rather leave that space honest than fabricate flavour descriptors. What I can tell you is that pot-distilled grain whisky at this strength typically delivers a rounder, more oil-rich texture than its column-still counterparts. Expect body. Expect something that coats the mouth rather than skipping across it. The Japanese craft approach tends to favour precision and balance, so I'd anticipate a clean but layered dram — less of the aggressive cereal character you sometimes find in young Scottish grain, and more considered integration.
The Verdict
At £94.95, this is not an impulse purchase, but context matters. Japanese single malt at comparable quality and ABV would set you back considerably more. What you're paying for here is a distillery with genuine ambition doing something unconventional with grain whisky — pot still distillation, cask strength bottling, no shortcuts. In a market saturated with identikit NAS releases hiding behind fancy packaging, this bottle actually has a story worth paying attention to. The 7.6 I'm giving it reflects a whisky that's doing something genuinely different in a category most producers treat as an afterthought. It's not flawless — the lack of an age statement and limited availability of detailed tasting information gives me slight pause — but the craft, the strength, and the ambition are all there. If you're the kind of drinker who's bored of playing it safe, this is worth your money.
Best Served
Pour it neat first, always, at this ABV. Give it five minutes in the glass, then add water — literally a few drops at a time. Pot-distilled grain at 51% will open up dramatically with even minimal dilution. If you want to get adventurous, this style of grain whisky works exceptionally well in a Japanese-style highball with quality soda water and a thin strip of lemon peel. The effervescence lifts the grain character beautifully, and at this strength it won't get lost in the dilution. A proper way to drink well on a warm evening.
