In a country where you can buy beer from vending machines, it’s seldom difficult to find a cold brew when you want one. And if you’re content with well-made, but fairly uniform mass-market lagers, you’ll have no trouble quenching your thirst in Japan.
A road trip is about the only way you'll be able to sample the handiwork of most of this country's small-scale brewers.
But if you’re looking for something with a bit of local flavor, think about hitting the highway, because a road trip is about the only way you’ll be able to sample the handiwork of most of this country’s small-scale brewers. Although a handful of microbrews are readily available in major cities like Tokyo, Osaka and Nagoya, which are also home to a number of brewpubs, the availability of craft beers from elsewhere in Japan tendw to be limited. To make matters more difficult, beer festivals are few and far between, retailers wary of unfamiliar products with limited shelf lives, and bars specializing in extensive selections of microbrews almost nonexistent.
Kamikaze Beer brewhouse is in the western Tokyo suburb of Nishi Kunitachi.
That’s not to say that microbrewed beers have had no perceptible impact on the Japanese market, though no one would go so far as to suggest that they pose any threat to the megabrewers. Although observers and brewers alike say that more consumer education is needed, there’s little doubt that Japanese beer fans are savvier than they were in 1994, when the government partially deregulated the industry, opening the doors for a new generation of brewers. Among them are three of the first to enter the market: Echigo in Niigata Prefecture on the Sea of Japan side of the main island of Honshu, ‘s Echigo Brauhaus, Okhotsk on the northern island of Hokkaido and Kanagawa Prefecture’s Sankt Gallen, located just south or Tokyo.
“A couple of years ago, visitors to the Great Japan Beer Festival would point and say, ‘Give me this. Give me that,’” notes Ryouji Oda, head of the Japan Craft Beer Association, a consumer-oriented group that organizes beer-related events and evaluation classes. “Now, they say, ‘I’d like a pale ale.’ Or, ‘I’d like a weizen.’”
Prior to the revision of the law, the industry was dominated by four major players whose product lines largely reflected a lager-oriented German heritage: traditional market leader Kirin Brewery Co.; upstart Asahi Breweries, whose wildly successful Asahi Super Dry put it hot on the heels of Kirin; venerable Sapporo Breweries; and distiller Suntory, the last company to enter the business in the pre-deregulation years. The only other domestic beer maker at the time was Orion, a much smaller regional based in Okinawa.
Japan’s beer landscape was forever altered seven years ago during the administration of then Prime Minister Morihiro Hosokawa. Smaller producers were allowed to enter the market for the first time when the minimum production requirement was lowered from 2,000 kiloliters (16,800 US barrels) per year to 60 kiloliters (504 barrels) for beer and just 6 kiloliters (50 barrels) for happoshu, a catch-all category for malt beverages that cannot legally be called beer and are therefore taxed at a lower rate. By comparison, Kirin, one of the world’s leading brewing companies, sold a total of 2.94 million kiloliters (24.7 million barrels) of beer and happoshu in 1999.
To put things in perspective, consider this: Modern Brewery Age estimates that only about 25 US specialty breweries, including Anchor, Sierra Nevada, Redhook, Pyramid and Widmer, are now capable of producing more than 16,800 barrels per year. To qualify for a brewing license in pre-deregulation Japan, these well-established US names would have been required to have the capacity to produce that much beer from the moment they left the starting gate. More than likely, that would have been an impossibility for all.
As the law now stands, however, most of the familiar US craftbrewers would be able to gain admission to the club, even if they weren’t able to produce to requisite 60 kiloliters per year at the outset. Progress toward that goal would be monitored over a three-year stretch during which they’d have to apply annually for a one-year temporary brewing license. Obtaining a permanent license, on the other hand, requires proof of the ability to meet the minimum production requirement on a consistent basis.
For some brewers, that can be a constant headache. Purchasing habits vary according to season and location. An unusually cool summer can hurt brewers of all sizes, wherever they may be situated. And in more northerly climes, winter can really put the chill on beer consumption. After all, it wasn’t that long ago that draft beer of any kind was a summertime-only phenomenon in Japan.
Location, Location, Location
Not surprisingly, location can mean everything. As in North America, brewers in Japan like to tout the virtues of consuming beer where it’s at its freshest: the source. But unlike English-speaking countries, where terms like “micro” or “craft” are used to indicate the size of the operation or the skill of the brewer, the Japanese refer to the products of small breweries as jibiiru, which means “local beer.” It’s a term that some brewers take quite literally.
Although hundreds of brewpubs and microbreweries have sprung up in Japan since deregulation, only a handful have managed to establish a foothold outside of their own backyards. The vast majority are still local in orientation, some because they were established as tourist attractions designed by “third-sector” ventures organized by public and private entities to help revive depressed local economies. Others are private-sector brewpubs that cater mainly to the local market, though some may bottle small quantities of their beer for souvenir-seeking travelers or for use in gift packs sold during the traditional summer and winter gift-giving seasons.
While there are those who are quite content not to stray too far from home, others are setting their sights farther afield. In some cases, they’re bypassing the retail maze by hawking their wares via the Internet; in others, they’re building restaurant chains to supply their beer to the thirsty and curious up and down the archipelago.
“There are more than 300 breweries in this country, and that means there are probably 300 different reasons for making beer,” says John Schultz, owner of Minami Aizu Brewing, a micro in rural Fukushima Prefecture and the only brewery owned and operated by a foreign-born entrepreneur, though others are on the way.
Schultz’s reason is one that will resonate with his peers in North America. After a lengthy career in the fast-paced world of Tokyo’s securities industry, the amateur homebrewer was looking for an occupation that suited his dream of living the rest of his life in Japan in a mountain village that spends much of the winter buried under a deep blanket of snow. Unlike so many other dreamers in this world, Schultz has had the good fortune to realize his by turning a hobby into a profession.
“There are other homebrewers who turned professional because they like brewing,” Schultz notes. “A lot of them would like to start their own breweries, but they don’t have the capital. Money’s the main barrier. It’s a lot cheaper in the United States, because there’s used equipment and land isn’t so expensive.”
Expertise from Abroad
While Schultz made the leap from homebrewing, fate decided the career paths of others, including Satoshi Niwa of Hakusekikan Brewery, located within a museum complex in Gifu Prefecture.
“Our management decided to diversify, and my boss asked me to start brewing. I didn’t have any experience or knowledge about beer, but I believed I could make good beer someday if I put my mind to it,” Niwa said.
Fans of Hakusekikan’s Super Vintage barley wine, which at 14 percent alcohol is reputedly the strongest beer brewed in Japan, would be quick to point out that he’s just being humble.
