All About Beer Magazine

In 1994, around the time brewery licensing regulations were changing, Ryouji Oda founded the Japan Craft Beer Association. The group initially set up a system of beer evaluation seminars based on U.S. standards, but rather than call it beer “judging,” they preferred to refer to students as beer “tasters.” In 1998, the JCBA began holding craft beer festivals, and now holds yearly events in Tokyo, Osaka and Yokohama.

Still, at this point Japan had no consumer-oriented beer club or organization, nor did it have any kind of a beer magazine. These would have to wait until after the year 2000. However, an emerging craft beer bar, Beer Club Popeye in Tokyo, functioned as a kind of beer geek clubhouse thanks to its continually growing selection of Japanese craft beer. Founded by Tatsuo Aoki as a western-style pub in 1985, Popeye was an early adopter of Japanese-brewed craft beer. From three taps in 1995, the number of handles grew to 20 in 1998, to 40 in 2002 and to 70 in 2008.

When Bryan Baird made the decision to start a brewery, he returned to the States in 1997 and enrolled at the American Brewers Guild in Davis, CA. Following a seven-week intensive course, he apprenticed for five weeks at Redhook. Back in Japan, he worked briefly a U.S. brewing equipment supplier, a position he soon left to devote almost a year to writing his initial business plan, while doing translation on the side. On a trip to the States, he met with old friends who would be interested in investing in his venture, and also had a 30-liter gravity-fed pilot brewing system configured and shipped to Japan.

Bryan arrived back in Japan with an investment of about $100,000 gathered from five investors, all of which went into the pub and the tiny 30-liter system. He now admits that he is glad they started so small. His biggest fear was to disappoint the backers by not being able to do things properly. Since he and Sayuri could barely pay themselves a salary, it was a challenge to stay afloat in all the red ink, and not to be forced to fold and walk away.

Still, sales of Baird Beer increased on a regular basis, and by most accounts, Bryan’s brew was considered to be the best in Japan. In 2003, he was able to move up to a larger 250-liter (two-barrel) system, and in 2006 he installed his current eight-barrel system. However, he still uses his older two-barrel system to produce one “seasonal” beer each week, on average—a grueling brewing schedule, but the effort has been instrumental in keeping shops, pubs and customers interested in the brand.

Good Beer—at a Price

Meanwhile, the beer enthusiast contingent at Beer Club Popeye held Japan’s first Real Ale Festival at the pub in the early spring of 2003. From this, a group decided to form a club for beer consumers. While the initial name was to have been the Real Ale Club, the interests of members quickly broadened, and they settled on the name the Good Beer Club at the founding meeting in 2004.

For the first two years, membership grew at a good pace, but by 2006 it began to decline somewhat as some realized the main focus of the GBC was to organize beer events, and not to campaign for lower beer taxes or homebrew legalization. Still, the group is fairly active and stages regular events.