ABSTRACTAccording to the present invention, a low common salt soy sauce having a favorable flavor, and, in particular, a low common salt soy sauce having a favorable flavor, containing ethanol, 2-phenyl ethanol, isobutyl alcohol, and isoamyl alcohol, which are known as important aromatic components in soy sauce at high concentrations, and further containing succinic acid, which is a taste component, at a high concentration can be obtained without using special means. Conventional soy sauce powders are disadvantageous in that they are likely to become hygroscopic and deliquescent and thus they easily form powder blocks during storage, and that they have high stickiness and thus they are less likely to be uniformly mixed with other powder components. The present invention provides a soy sauce powder having a favorable flavor and containing 2-phenyl ethanol and succinic acid at high concentrations in order to overcome such disadbantages without using special means. The low common salt soy sauce of the present invention is obtained by a method for producing a low common salt soy sauce, which comprises adding a carbohydrate raw material to moromi in which the viable soy sauce yeast cell count per 1 g of moromi is 1 x 107 cells or more, adjusting the common salt concentration of the moromi in a manner such that the common salt concentration in moromi juice after maturation is 4.0 to 12.0 w/v%, and carrying out fermentation and maturation of the moromi. The pH of the obtained low common salt soy sauce is 4.7 to 6.0.
