Japan - the Biru

The beer tourist is much like a scuba diver...

For most people, they only know the top of the ocean and are more than happy with playing on the surface. They get excited when a dolphin or other life breaks the surface, but that is as far as their interest goes. However, a scuba diver knows that there is a whole other wonder beneath the surface, a variety of life and experiences those on the surface will never know.

And such is the way of the beer tourist. My recent trip to Japan was no different.

The beer

Most will be familiar with the three main brands - Sapporo, Asahi & Kirin. I found Sapporo to be to my liking more than the other two, especially on draught in a hot yakitori bar. Kirin probably my least favourite, seemed to be more grainy than the others.

These main brands dominate the scene - similar to Lion & DB in NZ. The pale lager is pretty ubiquitous, though each also seem to throw in a black beer for colour, and with our timing, a seasonal amber autumn beer as well. But most unusual was the plethora of canned pale lager each brand seemed to promote. There was gold label, green label, tanrei (meaning "beauty", yeah right), and the bizarre promotion of beer with 70% malt (wow, lucky us!). And there was also the smallest can of beer I have ever seen, just 140ml!

But like scuba diver I am, it was the beers beneath the surface that I was more interested in...

Like the NZ craft beer industry at the moment, there was a lot of hops. The pick of these was the Baird Suruga Imperial IPA I had at the Nakameguro (Tokyo) Tasting Room. Lots of stewed fruit and caramel on the nose. A rich, slightly salty palate, with biscuitiness from the malt along with berries and melon. The type of complexity you would want from an IIPA. Another of note was the Swan Lake IPA.

But there were also a number of other interesting styles. Top of the list was the Ise Kadoya Kodai-mai (Ancient Rice) Ale at the famous Popeyes (Tokyo). A dark amber, I struggled for words to describe what was a very unique aroma and flavour - fruit, banana and spice, toffee and a salty palate. But most importantly, it was delicious.

It was interesting to note the number of Kolsch and Altbiers in the craft brewery ranges, obviously a popular style in Japan and ones we don't see so regularly in NZ. But there were also Espresso Stouts, Raunchbier, Black IPAs, a Pineapple Ale. A full list of the beers I tried is on ratebeer. The breweries that stood out were Bairds, Hidatakayama, Hitachino and Sankt Gallen.

The bars

Perhaps more impressive than the craft beer in Japan was the venues. And some of the venues were equally as hard to track down as the beer itself.

With the trip starting off with only one night in Osaka, I had already put down Beer Belly as place I wanted to visit. A tiny little bar down a small street in a quite inner city suburb, I wasn't sure we were in the right place onto we were pretty much on top of it. The bar just about took up half the space, with about 8 taps and 2 handpumps (including the local Minoh brewery). Some of the beer names were in english and some not, which was a problem for our two-and-a-half words of Japanese.

Of course, beer is the great interpreter, and it wasn't too long before the barman was translating the blackboard into english for me. A multi-talented barman he was too, when later we watched him cook and remove chips from a deep fryer with only a pair of chopsticks. With so much beer on offer, it was beer belly indeed!

It was also here that we witnessed the weird ritual that was repeated at nearly every other we visited. Before your pint is poured, the barman will run off a small amount from the tap into a bucket/tray first. I'm not sure what they think will be wrong with that first spurt, but they must go through a fair amount of the keg that way.

After a night away with Buddhist Monks (no beer there), we had 3 nights in Kyoto. My pre-trip research had shown a dearth of craft beer bars in Kyoto, so expectations were low. However, I had noted Tadg's Irish Bar as worthy of a visit. However, as someone else has also recently noted on ratebeer, the map posted there is wrong. So after not being able to locate it, I thought I would be clever and ask the concierge at our hotel to ring the bar and find out where it was for me. After she had called them up, she politely told me that the the name of the bar had in fact changed and gave me the right directions...and then sent me to the wrong place! I didn't know it at the time but I was much disappointed with The Gael, as it didn't have any of the exciting beers I had read on ratebeer. It became obvious when I cam home and worked it out, that somehow the friendly concierge had rung the wrong bar.

Nevertheless, what I did discover in Kyoto was that the large department stores stocked a great range of craft beers, and I managed to pick up many bottles from the micros to enjoy back in the room at the hotel. A similar theme played out over the next week, as we travelled through the Alps region without little prospect of any craft beer bars. However, I was able to pick up numerous bottles on our journey to enjoy along the way.

This break also allowed me to prepare for the tour-de-force that would Tokyo. I did have intentions to stop at the Baird Brewery on the way to Tokyo, but it worked out my eyes were bigger than my stomach and it was one thing I couldn't fit in. Armed with Dom's (from Hashigo Zake) must-do list of bars to visit, I had a busy couple of days ahead of me.

The first was potentially the best. A bit further out in Shimokitazawa - a cool suburb that was worth the visit on its own - we managed to track down the hard to find Ushitora bar(s). It was going to be an ongoing trend of being very difficult to find all these bars. Back to Ushitora, which was actually two bars. We were a bit early and had to wait until they opened at 5pm - nothing like a bit of enthusiasm. And the wait was worth it. In the bigger bar, there was a number of Japanese and US micros on tap. I decided to stick mostly to the local beers, the Yo-Ho Tokyo Black Porter on handpump being very memorable. We also struck up conversation with the barman who had just been at the recent Great Japan Beer Festival in Yokohama (unfortunately a couple of weeks before our trip) where one of his favourites was Tuatara APA.

The bar hop was very easy as we slipped next door to check out the second, even smaller, Ushitora bar. You could imagine my delight when I saw on the menu that they had all the Mikkeller Single Hop IPA series on tap. The Amarillo was my favourite, by then I am a bit of an Amarillo-fiend. We also had the barman try to teach us how to play with a Kendama, a Japanese folk toy, which consists of a wooden, hammer-like object with a ball connected to it by a string. We could hardly say a word to each other, but tried to take directions on how to complete tricks with it for a couple of hours.

The following night I had set aside to pay homage to the famous Popeyes. Popeyes must be one of the pre-eminent beer bars in the world, let alone Japan the beer bar in Japan. And after tracking it down in what seemed the middle of nowhere, it was obvious to see why. Proudly proclaiming 70 beers on tap (I wasn't able to verify them all, but I tried), many some the best that Japanese and American brewing has to offer. Table service from some of the happiest barman I think I have ever met. And the buzz of a full bar that just speaks people happy in their beer. For any beer nerd, there was just too much to choose from. But even that was made easier by the option of ordering a flight of ten 100ml tasters of any of the beers. And considering the strength of most of them, this wasn't a bad idea.

It was here that I was able to have the top rated beer in Japan - Hitachino Nest Espresso Stout - followed by Southern Tier's Farmer's Tan Imperial Pale Lager (one of my beers of the trip). There were also offerings from Stone, Rogue and Green Flash. This is a place you just want to come to every night.

Earlier that day I was able to find the Bairds Tasting Room in the suburb of Nakameguro (strangely located on the second floor of a Plaza building), to try and make up for not being able to visit the brewery. It was a bit early in the day, so lacked a bit of atmosphere, but I was able to sample a number of the Bairds beers - again I had too many choices, there must have been 20 on tap. All were really good, my favourite being the Suruga Bay IIPA and Bierre du Biwa, an ale made with the fruit of the loquat tree and fermented with a belgian yeast. And of course, I couldn't miss the chance to order the Tuatara Ardennes on tap - a bit of a treat.

Our last day, and I was able to stumble across the Bulldog as part of our wanderings. Disappointingly they weren't serving any of their tap beers during the day, but by a stroke of luck this forced me to order a Stone Dogfish Head Victory Saison Du Buff - another very memorable beer of the trip.

That night we had a pre-dinner drink at the Aldgate, another english-themed pub that was very popular with ex-pats. It's hard not to feel a little wrong sitting in an english pub when not in England, though the pint of Jever Pils and Baeron Rye helped lessen my doubt.

After dinner, I was very keen on tracking down Craftheads, renown for having rare American craft beer on tap. The beer isn't the only thing hard to find though, as we wandered around the streets of Shibuya trying to find the bar. After about 45 minutes I was about to give up, before checking down one last narrow street we finally stumbled across the stairs that led down to the bar. It was a very cool setting underground (nods to HZ), and the beer list was impressive as it was expensive. Stone, Three Floyds, Green Flash, Lost Abbey, Founders. At over $40 for some 300ml glasses, I kept to some of the more affordable options. Not that those disappointed. My last, the Southern Tier Pumking, was probably the beer of the trip and a great note to sign off on.

Footnote: For any one thinking of making a beer pilgrimage to Japan, I can highly recommend it. But start saving now, it was the must expensive place I have drunk in. With some of the 'cheaper' glasses of craft beer nearing $20 and tasters at $10, your wallet gets as much of a work out as your taste buds.