At a Tokyo news conference on June 4, Sapporo Beer President Masaki Oga announced his company would halt sales of its Goku Zero alcoholic beverage after current inventory was shipped. The parent company, Sapporo Holdings, had been contacted by the National Tax Agency in January regarding the manufacturing process for Goku Zero, which is classified for tax purposes as something commonly referred to as daisan (No. 3) beer, meaning a fermented drink made with something other than malted barley and fortified with grain spirits. This recipe gets around the tax for happoshu, another beerlike beverage that itself was created in the 1990s to get around the beer tax.