Crafting Japanese Beer

From Texas to Tokyo the beer does flow. Yes, the craft beer phenomenon that seems to be everywhere I travel is also happening in Japan. That may be simply because I like beer and am powerfully drawn to good expressions of it wherever they may be found. But clearly, there is a rapidly expanding development occurring across the globe. During this short stay in the capital I have explored the scene and tasted a range of beers claiming craft status. So, let’s talk about new JPAs and what is going on in this corner of East Asia when it comes to good brews.

First, a bit of history. There are four giants of the Japanese beer industry. In no particular order they are Asahi, Kirin, Sapporo and Suntory. They make many other drinks also but the beer they produce is predominantly lager which is consumed in great volume across the archipelago and enjoyed by the overwhelming majority of the beer drinking population in Japan. I drank a lot of mediocre beer during the years I spent here and although never enthusiastic about the quality, it did play an important role in social bonding and my embracing of all things Japanese. You can do worse than Asahi Super Dry but you can do much better, at least nowadays. Back in the early 2000s that wasn’t so easy except for the occasional bottle of Chimay Blue which somehow made it to the beautiful rural backwoods of Japan where I lived and was often to be found boozing with mates under the cherry blossom while we barbequed and tried to impress the local ladies. So, before I begin to assert any kind of prejudicial or other musings on the subject let me just say, I like good beer but what ‘good’ means is necessarily subjective and even if there had been craft beer back then, I couldn’t honestly say I would have bought it or enjoyed it. I had a couple of lagers for old time’s sake recently and found it bland, boring and frankly not that enjoyable even when served up with a healthy dose of nostalgia. So, what has changed?

For starters, and as an aside, my taste in beer has changed. But then so what? If you enjoy Japanese lager, drink it and be merry. For me though, what we have come to call craft beer is incomparably better than anything the big brewers make (including Japanese ones) and I like to believe that anyone who tries it would be an instant convert. I’ve been wrong before but will, however, keep on embracing craft beer.

The big thing that changed in Japan and saw the rapid rise of micro-breweries was a relaxing of the brewing laws in 1995. This enabled smaller operations to get going because there was no longer a requirement to brew a minimum of 2 million litres per year. However, without a history of home brewing like Britain, the US and Australasia, the initial efforts were by all accounts poor. That is not the case today and now it is not hard to find decent craft beer even at supermarkets. Having said that, during my stay of about two weeks in which I doggedly sought out the best offerings I could find, I was disappointed. Perhaps my expectations were too high. I had just flown in from London which has a proliferation of brewers and purveyors of consistently excellent standard and progressive expressions of every kind of beer style you can imagine. Admittedly my survey was not exhaustive and I did not necessarily tick any expert’s top ten. That said, I did not taste much that “wowed” me which has been a regular occurrence in other parts of the craft brewing world like California, Texas, New York, the UK and New Zealand (again, not a complete tour).

Were my taste buds having an off day? Was my jet-lagged body not on beer appreciation form? Was I experiencing Japanese cultural overload? I love Japan and craft beer and want both to flourish so me being overly prejudicial seems unlikely. So, why was J-craft beer only okay? Notable moments were at Beer Faucets in Shibuya where I tasted a Brimmer Brewing pale ale, Baird Beer’s Teikoku IPA (6.5%) and Sugura Bay Imperial IPA (8.5%). These are all very drinkable and well crafted but the hopping regime seemed to be lacking and fresh bitter and hoppy flavours expected in such styles were not present as expected, especially in the latter two beers. Baird Beer appeared to be doing some pretty interesting stuff, quality branding and delivery through a number of welcoming tap rooms was a good way to explore. The Rising Sun Pale Ale (5.5%) is respectable with fresh flavours, hops nicely present and the right bitterness for the style. The 1,000 yen (6 GBP) sampler set is good value for the three 140ml glasses (pictured) of any of the Baird range: Morning Coffee Stout (7%) – a balanced, clean stout; Dark Sky Imperial Stout (10%) – big, smooth and grunty but far from its claim to be “a torrential downpour of hop character within a maelstrom of roasted malt”; and Angry Boy Brown Ale (7%) – solid flavours and tasty. The Wabi-Sabi JPA (6%) was clean and herbal in ways that captured Japanese cuisine ascetics that are polite, refined and unassuming. I also tried the Kurafune Porter (6%) and the West Coast Wheat Wine (10%) which were decent and produced with artisanal care but in my opinion fell short somehow of the Baird Beer philosophy of creating a celebratory experience with beer bursting with flavour and character. Balance and complexity may as they say equal character but everything seemed so smooth and balanced that it was a bit boring. There were no nice surprises and generally it tasted like the hops had been dialled down and any overt bitterness avoided. Maybe that better suits the Japanese palate and a population of which a tiny percentage drink craft beer but it was underwhelming and flattened my Tokyo high.

Moving on I tried many and various beers including some by Nest, Yo-Ho and Coedo whose Black Lager ‘Shikkoku’ is among the finest beer I tasted and comes in beautiful bottles with a superb design. Yes, there is plenty to be excited about on the J-craft beer scene and clearly it has come a long way through Japan’s brewers’ perseverance and the high quality output is a credit to them. A number of the better craft breweries are owned and run by expatriates with Japanese partners and while this is understandable given Japan’s beer brewing history it is still uncertain what a more fully authentic Japanese influence might look like. Locals and the industry generally have a distance to go and there are signs of cooption by the big four mass producers and attempts to retain market share by using satellite micro-breweries to replicate craft beer at which they are all failing as in other countries. Big British breweries are attempting to make craft-style beers but even a blind taste test shows they haven’t got what it takes. It remains to be seen whether the likes of Asahi will try and buy up craft breweries and tempt today’s artisans to sell out. The trumpeting of a ji-biiru (lit. local beer) coming of age is premature. However, if the story of top Japanese whisky is anything to go by, craft beer in Japan has a very promising, and possibly world class, future ahead.