Sake breweries are usually fairly quiet in the summer. Except for the few large breweries where brewing continues all year, most places are dark and quiet and empty, as the brewers themselves have gone home for the summer. Traditionally, the kurabito (brewers) traveled great distances from their rural farmland homes to work at the kura (brewery), although today many places employ local people.
There is one yearly event, however, that livens the whole place up: hatsu-nomikiri. Held sometime between June and September, this is an event in which the condition of each tank of sake brewed the previous season is sampled and checked.
Until about 100 years ago, sake was brewed in cedar tanks with bamboo bindings. As such tanks are significantly less airtight than the solid stainless steel tanks used today, there was a greater possibility that the sake had "gone south."