July 11, 2026

Six Ways to Drink Yuzu & Kombu

Bartenders have spent the last decade chasing acidity, bitterness, and sweetness. The fifth taste — umami — has stayed behind the kitchen door.

That seems like an oversight. Umami is what makes a drink linger. It gives weight to something light, and a long, quiet finish to something bright. It is the reason a good consommé satisfies in a way that lemon water never will.

MIYABI Yuzu & Kombu Liquid is our attempt to put umami behind the bar. It begins with Enaga Oni Kombu — a rare kelp harvested from the cold, clear waters of Hokkaido — steeped into a dashi, then blended with the juice of Japanese yuzu. The result is a concentrate: citrus and sea, brightness and depth, in a single bottle.

Here are six ways to pour it.

First, the ratio

MIYABI Yuzu & Kombu Liquid concentrate poured onto a spoon

This is a concentrate, not a cordial to be sipped neat. Dilute one part liquid to ten or eleven parts of your mixer. Roughly 25 ml in a tall glass.

Go heavier and the salt and citrus crowd out everything else. Go lighter and the kombu disappears. At 1:10, the umami sits underneath — felt more than tasted. That is where it belongs.

One 300 ml bottle will make around three litres of finished drink.

1. Kombu × Yuzu — the purest expression

Yuzu & Kombu Liquid with tonic water and mint

Tonic water, ice, a sprig of mint. Nothing else.

Start here. With no spirit to hide behind, you taste exactly what kombu does to a drink: the citrus arrives first, the mint lifts it, and then something savoury settles in behind the bubbles and stays. Sweeten to taste if you like.

Alcohol-free, and no less interesting for it.

2. Beer — the easiest convert

Yuzu & Kombu Liquid mixed with beer

Pour a measure into the glass, then top with a cold lager.

Beer already has bitterness and carbonation; what it lacks is depth of flavour. Kombu supplies it, and yuzu cuts through the malt. If you have ever enjoyed a shandy and wished it were more grown-up, this is that drink.

3. Gin — for the savoury drinker

Yuzu & Kombu gin cocktail with juniper berries and orange peel

Gin, a measure of the liquid, soda, and a twist of orange. Rosemary and a few juniper berries, if you have them.

Juniper and kombu turn out to be old friends — both piney, both resinous, both a little wild. The orange peel bridges them, and the finish is long and unmistakably savoury. This is the one bartenders ask about.

4. Tomato — a Bloody Mary that makes sense

Yuzu & Kombu tomato juice cocktail with black pepper

Tomato juice, the liquid, cracked black pepper. Vodka optional.

Tomatoes are rich in glutamate; so is kombu. Put them together and the umami compounds rather than adds — the same synergy that underpins Japanese cooking. This is the drink that explains the science by itself.

5. Fruit — bright on top, deep underneath

Yuzu & Kombu Liquid with orange and soda

Orange juice, soda, plenty of ice.

The most approachable of the six. It reads as a citrus soda — until the finish, when the kelp arrives and the whole thing turns out to have a floor beneath it.

6. Tea — tradition in a glass

Yuzu & Kombu Liquid with matcha green tea

Cold matcha, poured over the liquid and ice.

Matcha carries its own umami — it too is rich in glutamate — and here it meets kombu on equal terms. Grassy, aromatic, faintly sweet, and quietly luxurious. Two of Japan’s oldest flavours, in a glass with ice.

And simply, with hot water

Warm water and nothing else makes a soothing cup for a cold evening — closer to a broth than a tea, and all the better for it.