Minoh Beer, Osaka

Imagine waking up one morning and finding out your parents have bought you a brewery? It’s a scene that dreams are made of – at least for beer geeks like me – but for Mayuko and Kaori Ohshita, that’s pretty much what happened back in 1997 when their father, a liquor store operator, decided to start a brewery and put them in charge of it.

Outside the brewery

Fast forward to the present day and the Ohshita sisters are running one of the most innovative breweries in Japan. Minoh W-IPA was one of the few Japanese double IPA’s and is multi-award winning. Minoh Cabernet is part beer, part wine, made with a significant portion of cabernet grapes. Past specials like Hemp High and Ganja High speak for themselves. And Minoh Stout recently one World’s Best Stout at the World Beer Awards 2009 – one of the many awards Minoh has received over the years (if you’re going to try Minoh Stout, definitely try the bottle over the hand-pump version). While other brewers are sticking to safe styles or trying to copy world styles, Minoh is out there experimenting, and they have a huge following in Japan.

Small bar in the entrance area

The brewery is located in Mino-o Osaka, about 30 minutes by train from central Osaka (official Romanisation of Minoh City is actually Minoh, but train and city signs still refer to it as Mino-o.) While there’s a small bar area at the brewery, it’s not an official “bar” as such – there are only two or three seats and only one tap. It’s mostly a place for people to wait while they are buying take-away bottles.

A newspaper cutting showing the Minoh sisters

Thankfully it’s not necessary to go all the way to the brewery to sample Minoh beer. Minoh runs two bars in downtown Osaka – Beer Belly and Beer Belly Edobori – that not only serve draught Minoh beer, but craft beers from other Japanese microbreweries. Both bars are featured in Beer in Japan’s Osaka listings.

The brewing area

The brewery itself is split into two roughly equal sections – the mashing, fermentation, and kegging/bottling area on the left, and a huge cool storage room on the right.

On the left there are two copper vessels. The front one is for mashing, lautering, and whirlpooling – the back one is the kettle, where the wort is boiled and hopped. Here’s the mashing, lautering, and whirlpooling vessel:

Mash, lauter, whirlpool tank - top section

Inside the top section

Bottom section

Inside the bottom section

Boiling capacity is 1000L. To fill their largest fermentation tanks, the sisters have to brew over two days.

Pipework linking to the boiler, with heat exchanger in the background

Here’s Mayuko Ohshita explaining the process of brewing and transferring the wort between tanks.

Ohshita-san explaining the brewing process

The tanks bears a striking similarity to those used at Harvestmoon (see caption “Mash tun and boiling tank”), though the control panel is significantly different. One day, if I can get the time and my Japanese improves, I’d love to follow a beer through from beginning to end and see what all those buttons and dials actually do!

Control panel

W-IPA is one of the beers that brought Minoh to my attention. It’s a very definite Japanese style double IPA, which means that it has a larger malt sweetness and more subdued hop profile than an West Coast Double IPA such as Coronado’s Idiot IPA. The closest comparison I can think of Great Divide’s Hercules Double IPA. It’s also not a million miles away from a British double IPA (though a British double is quite a rare thing).

Taking a sample of W-IPA from the fermentation tank

When it’s on top form, W-IPA is fantastic – and you can’t get better form than direct from the fermentation tank!

One week old W-IPA

A week into fermentation and this was lovely and hoppy – I could have consumed it all day (or at least, until I fell over). While W-IPA is well known amongst beer geeks in Japan and was one of the first Minoh beers that I tried, Ohshita-san told me that it only really became popular after it was featured in a newspaper article in summer 2009.

The W-IPA was followed by a sample of Minoh Cabernet – again, direct from the fermentation tank. My first time to try Cabernet, I had little idea what to expect – crossover beers can be just plain weird – but the Cabernet was very nice indeed. So good that I bought a couple of bottles to drink on the train back from the brewery!

Cold storage room

Minoh is quite different from other Japanese breweries I’ve been to in that their cold storage room not only contains their keg, bottles, and hops, but also their conditioning tanks.

The back of the cold storage room

It’s a huge room, filled with 8 tanks for conditioning and 2 for bottling, and appears very chaotic – a lot like my apartment (though probably a little bit warmer than my apartment in winter!)

Looking towards the front of the cold storage room

In fact, quite a lot of the Minoh brewery is in organised chaos – something I liked a lot, because it highlights the family and fun aspect to the business.

Ohshita-san with a bag of freshly picked hops

Here’s Ohshita-san showing off some of the Japanese hops she picked from Shiga Kogen’s hop farm. I do like the way that a number of the Japanese breweries are friends with each others – a spirit of co-operation rather than a spirit of competition.

Behind Ohshita-san you can see a tank with some string tied to the opening – this is how Minoh do dry-hopping. Bags are filled with hops – Minoh mostly use pellet hops – and tied inside the conditioning tanks.

Dry hopping

Bottling at Minoh is done by hand. While this new machine from the USA adorns the brewery…

New bottling machine

…at the time I visited the brewery, bottling was still being done using this smaller bottling machine…

Existing bottling machine

…and capped using something every homebrewer will be familiar with…

Hand capper

Yup, a good old hand capper.

Ohshita-san at the labelling area

As well as being capped by hand, bottled are all labelled by hand also – in fact, while I was touring, a customer came to the brewery to buy some beer and Ohshita-san had to quickly label some bottles for sale:

Bottles are labelled by hand

The reason for the hand labelling is Minoh’s distinctive labels – while the back labels can be done automatically, the shape of the front labels means that they can only be done by hand.

Distinctive Minoh labels

Minoh’s beers can also be ordered with original labels for company events, weddings etc. Quite a few different designs were hanging around – even MTV has ordered beer for events from Minoh.

Original beer labels

Of all the labels hanging around, this has to be my favourite:

Father's day beer with a touch of humour

Was this a personal beer made for their father?

Brewery tour finished, it was back to the “bar”. On the single tap was Minoh Weizen –  a good standard weizen. (I used to drink a lot of weizen in the past, but these days I rarely drink weizen at all.)

Weizen on tap

Minoh make a number of seasonal beers and special beers. This “monkey beer” was a peach beer, exclusive to Sogo department stores. Peachy it was – tangy, not sweet. Fruity beers are made by a number of breweries in Japan, with varying results. I enjoyed this one.

Peach monkey beer, exclusive to Sogo

The seasonals are produced in limited quantities.  The record for the fastest ever sell-out was a release of their February Valentine’s Imperial Stout which, after a TV station mentioned the beer, was sold out within 30 minutes of the brewery opening on the day of release.

W-IPA

Final beer of the visit was the W-IPA which, true to form, had that malty Hercules style profile.

As work continued in the brewery, it was time for me to return back to Osaka – not without buying some bottles to drink on the train back of course!

Work continues in the brewery

Minoh’s website is here. Their current beers, including seasonals and boxed sets, are listed on this page. Beer Belly and Beer Belly Edobori are both near Higobashi station – details here, map here. If you’re intending to visit the brewery because you’ll be in the area, I’d advise contacting them first – the Beer Belly bars are better places to try the beers though, because they have a large range of Minoh beers on draught.

My opinion? I was given a very warm welcome at Minoh by Ohshita-san, and it was awesome to see inside the brewery and talk about the operations with her. Minoh has been a stand-out brewery for me in Japan and I’ll be continuing to watch for new releases and keep enjoying the beers. By coincidence, as I write this now, I’ve just found out that today Cat and Cask has Minoh’s 2010 limited Valentines Imperial Stout on tap. I’ve already ordered one of the limited 200 sets for delivery this weekend, but I can think of nothing better than finishing this review and heading to C&C for a pint of it on draught!

Outside Baird Brewery, Numazu

Today, December 18th 2009, is the commercial release of Chris Poel’s award winning homebrew recipe Bakayaro! at Baird’s Harajuku Taproom.

Chris is a brewer I have deep respect for. A homebrewer turned commercial brewer, Bakayaro! is even listed as a kit available from More Beer in the US. As homebrewers go, could there be anyone else more “living the dream”?

To celebrate the launch of Bakayaro! I contacted Chris and asked him for the recipe. While not exactly the same as made at Baird Brewery (adjustments have to be made for commercial brewing equipment efficiency, brand of grain, etc), it is the same as Chris made it.

Chris will be at Harajuku Taproom tonight, 18th December, from 5pm to 8pm to share his joy. Photos are of Chris touring people around the Baird Brewery in Numazu. Baird also has taprooms in Nakameguro (which serves import beer also) and Numazu.

Malt tasting

Bags of fresh leaf hops in the freezer

Chris makes a lot of people hoppy

The beer making equipment

Chris at the mash tun and kettle

BakaYaro! – The Recipe

Here’s the recipe, the last version I did at home, which turned out pretty damn good. Similar but not exactly what we did at the brewery.

21 liters
OG = 1.080
FG = 1.016-1.020
SRM = 20-25
IBU = 80
Mashing Efficiency = 80%

Grains
• 2000 g Crisp Maris Otter (28.33%)
• 2000 g Weyermann Munich I (28.33%)
• 2000 g Weyermann Lt Wheat (28.33%)
• 425 g Dingemans Special B (5%)
• 425 g Dingemans Aromatic (5%)
• 425 g Dingemans Biscuit (5%)

Hops [estimated 80 IBUs]
• 36 g Centennial whole hops (10.0%) (first wort hops)
• 29 g Zeus whole hops (15.4%) (60 min)
• 28 g Chinook whole hops (11.8%) (50 min)
• 43 g Centennial whole hops (10.0%) (hopback)
• 43 g Centennial whole hops (10.0%) (whirlpool)
• 25 g Centennial whole hops (10.0%) (1st dry hops) for 5-7 days
• 25 g Centennial whole hops (10.0%) (2nd dry hops) for 5-7 days

Yeast/Other
• 12 g gypsum in mash
• 1 Servo capsule (10 min)
• 1 whirlfloc tablet (10 min)
• US-05 or WLP001 California Ale or Wyeast 1056 American Ale

Mash @ 64-65C for 60 minutes
Boil for at least 75 minutes
Ferment at 20-21C
If you pitch enough healthy yeast, fermentation should be complete in 5-8 days.

Lost in a sea of fermentation tanks

Chris explaining about the conditioning tanks and dry hopping

Chris explains about the bottling equipment

Chris shows off the sugar used for carbonating Baird's bottled beer

Kiuchi Brewery welcomes you

How would you like to make your own beer at a Japanese brewery? Well you can, at the Brew on Premises facilities of the Kiuchi Brewery in Ibaraki, and in spring 2009 – before I started Beer in Japan - I did just that.

You’ll probably know Kiuchi better as the maker of the Hitachino Nest range of beers – they are one of the better distributed craft beers in Japan and have a distinctive owl symbol. They were also the first Japanese craft brewery to export overseas and today they remain almost the only Japanese craft brewery to export consistently. In 2009 they paired with Brooklyn Brewery to brew Brooklyn Lager under contract for Brooklyn Parlor in Japan.

The brewing room

Kiuchi is one of only a handful of brewers to offer BOP facilities in Japan. Here’s how it works: You choose how much beer you want to make – the minimum is 45 x 330ml bottles, at around 600 yen a bottle. The BOP instructor will then discuss beer ingredients and types of beer and help you design the style of beer that you want to make. For the rest of the day, you’ll be making the beer – from crushing the grain to mashing and boiling hops - until it’s ready for fermentation. Kiuchi will then ferment the beer and deliver the bottles to you  – with labels you design – a few weeks later. Very popular for weddings, apparently.

Grain

Book showing the grains that make up Nest's beers

At around 600 yen a bottle, it isn’t cheap – being about roughly 75% more expensive that just buying one of Kiuchi’s beers instore – but that’s not the point: it’s your beer you’re making, to your recipe, and it’s a really cool thing to do.

Hops

Explanation of the different types of hop

The instruction was in Japanese only since Yukie, our instructor, didn’t speak English. Since I went with someone Japanese and I’m familiar with the beer making process, that wasn’t a big problem. (Staff in the nearby bar and the owners do speak English so maybe they could arrange something if you’re going in a group that doesn’t speak Japanese – you’d need to check.)

There were two of us so we made two different beers. Since arriving in Japan, one of my favourite beers has been Hitachino Nest White Ale and I was keen to find out the recipe, so that was my first choice. The second beer we chose to be an IPA. This was a bit of a challenge since Hitachino Nest doesn’t actually make an IPA – the closest is the Japanese Classic Ale.

Orange peel, coriander, and nutmeg - all ingredients in Hitachino Nest White Ale

Yukie’s initial suggestion for an IPA was bittering with Northern Brewer and flavour and aroma coming from Cascade. In addition they would dry hop the beer with Cascade, something which would take some creative thinking because the BOP is not set up for dry hopping and they’ve never attempted it before. It was a fairly respectable suggestion – but I wanted to use something different from Cascade, which is a fairly standard American IPA hop, so I asked Yukie about alternatives.

She discussed the various hops they had in pellet form (NB, Perle, Chinook, Cascade, Challenger, Saaz, Styrian Golding, Hallertau, Kent Golding, and Tettnanger) and fresh leaf (Cascade and Sapphire). In the end, we changed aroma and flavour to 50% Cascade and 50% Challenger (supposedly spicy) with Sapphire being used for the dry hop. I hadn’t heard of Sapphire before but after a quick look on the iPhone, I found this writeup of it on Beer Wikia:

Sapphire – A new breed of hop that is starting to replace the Hallertauer Mittlefrueh variety, which has become more and more susceptible to disease and pests. Shares many of the Hallertaur Mittlefrueh characteristics and is very well suited as an aroma hop. This hop is distinguished by a sweet and clean citrus aroma that has a hint of tangerine. (Alpha acid 2–4.5% / Beta acid 4–7%)

Sounded very nice indeed. And here it is, measured out:

100g of Sapphire for 15L of beer - lovely!

Dry hopping is usually done after fermentation so that the hop aroma doesn’t escape with the CO2. Yukie said it wouldn’t be possible for us to do that so instead we left the hops in the beer during the entire fermentation process, wrapped in a weighed down net bag. It wouldn’t give us a rich hop aroma, but at least it would add flavour and was a step in the right direction. I appreciate Yukie trying something new for us.

Yukie demonstrates fly sparging

The whole process was pretty easy and professionally controlled – I’ll write more about the technical details for each beer with the recipes at the end. Yukie controlled timing well – not surprising because on the previous day she’d had over 20 people making beer – weekends obviously get busy! Lucky for us we had the whole place to ourselves with it being a weekday and the other people who were due to brew cancelling.

After making the beer, we had a quick look at Kiuchi’s old brewing setup, before they moved to a larger factory.

The old brewing setup

Tanks - max size around 1400L

It’s an indication of the scale of success of the Kiuchi brewery that the old equipment, which is no longer in use, is as big as the brewing setup most other Japanese craft brewers are still using.

After brewing, we needed a drink – so we went to the bar at the brewery and tried some of Kiuchi’s beers, wines, and sake, including the hard to get Red Rice Ale and Japanese Classic Ale.

Tasty

It’s while drinking that I spotted a guy outside with a beard walking around, and after a comment of “Isn’t that guy with the beard walking about the owner?” to the bar staff, she asked if I wanted to talk with him. Less than a minute chatting to Toshiyuki Kiuchi and he invited us to a private tour of the new brewery! Result.

The new brewery is huge. The beer making section is imposing by itself…

Where the beer magic happens

What happens if I touch this?

…but that doesn’t even hint as to what lies past there – room after room of fermenters, lagering tanks, yeast cleaning tanks, and a huge new automatic bottling setup. I lost count as to how many tanks I saw but it must have been in the 40-50 range.

A few of the smaller tanks

Some more

And more - with the new bottling line on the right

The bottling line runs between rooms

The buckets that homebrewers often use for fermentation? Here they were used for blow off. The sound of bubbling from this bucket containing the blow-off tube from a 4700L tank was orgasmic:

I think we have a bit of fermentation going on in this tank

Returning back to the bar and trying some more beer while ordering a keg of White Ale to be delivered back to my house, Youichi Kiuchi strolled by and asked whether we wanted a tour of the main factory – no shortage of offers to see it then! – and at closing time, after finding out there wasn’t another train out for another two hours, he offered to drive us to Mito, where there’s a larger station and Kiuchi’s restaurant. I was much appreciated.

In Mito, rather than get the train back, on a whim we decided to head to the Kiuchi owned restaurant in the hope of trying their Pilsner which is only sold there. It took us quite a while to get there since we got lost a couple of times – why we didn’t ask to be dropped off there, I don’t know! – and when we got there they’d run out of Pilsner (will I ever get to try it?!) but we did bump into Toshiyuki Kiuchi again and he gave us a free sample of an English ale which they only sell in that restaurant. They really should make those beers – Pilsner, Ale, and the JCA and Rice Ale – easier to get.

Two days later, the keg of White Ale arrived – about 11,000yen for 15L with free delivery. They didn’t even charge us the keg fee, instead saying “Well if you don’t send the keg back, we’ll send you a bill!” Here it is hooked up to the kegerator I bought from Yahoo Action:

Yum!

The craft beer that started my love for Japanese craft beers – on tap, in my house. Now that’s nice!

A few weeks later the bottles arrived, complete with our labels:

Let's Drinking with Enjoy OUR IPA and Let's drinking White Ale

Five lovely boxes of beer (and an empty keg!)

14 more bottles than anticipated (yes, I had to pay for the extra!)

The finished product

And how did they taste? Fantastic. The While Ale turned out very much like Hitachino Nest’s own White Ale – maybe a little more nutmeg, but their commercial white ale can also vary in strength of nutmeg with the taste fading as the beer matures. Now late 2009, the nutmeg is more subdued. The IPA? I’d say it turned out more like a strong pale ale, but lovely gorgeous caramel taste to it and vibrant finish.

Here’s the technical detail on how the beers were made, including the recipes.

Process

All grain, of course. Boil volume on both was 30L. The aim was to bottle 15L, but I’m guessing there was about 20L (maybe more) after boiling – some was wasted in the cooling pipes.

For mashing the White Ale, there was 10m at 40 degrees, recirculate 5 x 2L (out through the tap at the bottom, pour back onto the grain), then 10m at 50 degrees, recirculate 5 x 2L, bring temp to 65 degrees, recirculate 2 x 2L, then 40m at 65 degrees, recirculate 5 x 2L, iodine test, then temperature was brought up to 76 degrees for 10 minutes filtering (take out wort slowly from the tap and pour back in slowly) and then lautering (sprinkling on 76 degrees water while taking out wort and pouring into another tank for boiling).

For the IPA, the 40 degrees step was dropped with the times for 50/65 increased.

Hops schedule – the times shown the actual times I was brewing. ie. started brewing at 13h 40m.
1st hops: 13:40; 2nd: 14:00; 3rd: 14:10; 4th: 14:14; End 14:15
At 14:15, whirlpool then leave for 10m, then cool and bucket.

Let’s drinking White Ale

This was to be as close to Hitachino Nest White Ale as possible. While we were told this was the same recipe, when visiting the new brewery I saw White Ale being made. Our recipe had the orange peel ground with the coriander – but in the brewery, orange peel was in a bag in the whirlpool tank, so some adjustment has obviously been made to reproduce the White Ale recipe on the smaller homebrew-like BOP system. Still, coming direct from the brewer and adjusted by themselves, it’s as close as you’ll get to the real thing. In fact it wouldn’t surprise me if this wasn’t the original experimental recipe, which was then later modified for commercial brewing.

2 Row: 4700g
Wheat: 2200g

1st hops: 20g, Perle pellets
2nd: none
3rd: 30g, Styrian Goldings pellets
4th: none
End: 50g coriander, 30g dried orange peel, 8g nutmeg

Make sure you use a grinder to grind the coriander and orange peel – crushing the coriander with a rolling pin doesn’t give the same result. The ground coriander and orange peel are added with the nutmeg directly to the wort before whirlpool – there’s no bag used.

I would also advise that after fermentation is complete, you taste the beer daily and rack it out of the primary once it has a taste that you like. If you leave it too long, you could have a dominating orange peel taste.

The commercial version of this can sometimes have a strong nutmeg taste and sometimes a subtle nutmeg taste – this recipe came out towards the stronger end, the nutmeg subduing slightly as the beer aged in the bottle. However that was made on Kiuchi’s equipment. If you are homebrewing this, I’d advise keeping with the ratios Kiuchi suggests for the first time before varying the recipe, and monitoring that beer over a period of time to see how the taste changes as time passes.

Let s Drinking with Enjoy OUR IPA

The recipe was calculated for an IBU of 42 and alcohol of 7.5% (no hydrometer was ever used so I can’t verify this). If I was making this at home, I’d hold back on half or all of the 100g of Sapphire and dry hop with it.

Pale malt: 6400g
Munich malt: 1200g
Crystal 60L: 800g

1st hops: 33g, Northern Brewer pellets
2nd: 10g each of Cascade, Challenger pellets
3rd: 50g each of Cascade, Challenger pellets
4th: 100g of Sapphire fresh leaf in a hop bag
End: remove Sapphire before whirlpool and put into the bucket

Roti's House, Harvestmoon Brewery

When I first heard that the multi award winning Harvestmoon Brewery was near Tokyo Disneyland, I thought “near” meant a few subway stops away.

Arriving at Maihama Station

Even when I alighted at Maihama station, I still expected to have to take a bus or a 30 minute hike in the opposite direction from Tokyo Disney Resort to get there. Ok, so Roti’s House - the Harvestmoon Brewery restaurant and meeting point for the brewery tour – might be in the resort but I still couldn’t believe they would actually make the beer in such an expensive location.

Entrance to Ikspiari

Turns out I was wrong.

Roti's House

Roti’s House is not only the restaurant face for Harvestmoon but it also houses the brewery.

Beer available to take-away

Owned by the same company that runs Tokyo Disney Resort – including Tokyo Disneyland and Tokyo Disneysea – Harvestmoon Brewery Roti’s House is located in the Ikspiari shopping center at the resort. Since Ikspiari isn’t actually in Tokyo Disneyland itself there’s no entrance fee to go to the restaurant.

Explanation and sampling room

Today I was here for one of the small brewery tour sessions – limited to around 10 people - the brewery hosts occasionally. I paid my registration money and was led to a room at the side of the restaurant. From the size of the room, it was clear Roti’s House is bigger than it looks from the outside.

Grain samples and beer explanation sheet

The tour started with a presentation about how beer is made from Sonoda-san, one of the brewers. We were invited to taste grain, smell the pellet hops Harvestmoon uses, and even taste the hops if we wanted to. The talk was all in Japanese but Sonoda-san does speak some English and could answer questions in English.

Sonoda-san explains the ingredients that make beer

Me though, I was itching to get inside the brewery and see just how big it was.

Part of the restaurant

Explanation over, we were led out to the restaurant. The back of the restaurant has windows that look into the brewery:

Window into the brewery

After changing into wellies and walking through disinfecting solution, we were led into the brewery:

Tanks are you enter

The brewery is very compact. As you enter you are immediately greeted by the fermentation and serving tanks. There are 11 tanks for fermentation and conditioning and 5 tanks for storage and aging.

Beer in the restaurant is served directly from the tanks – there is no kegging and bottling in-between. As Sonoda-san explained, that made getting the license for the brewery quite difficult because for tax purposes they need to calculate on a daily basis how much beer is served – it’s easy when you’re kegging, not so easy when you’re serving straight from 1000L tanks.

Mash tun and boiling tank

The equipment used in the brewery is all Japanese. The mash tun – also used for lautering – is shown in the right in the photo above. Behind it is the boiling tank. Capacity is 1000L.

Plate chiller

Hot wort is pumped through this plate chiller. I didn’t add the “handy” ears – honest.

Pipes connecting equipment

There are pipes running everywhere in the brewery, mostly along the ceiling, connecting all the various pieces of equipment.

Sonoda-san explains about the brewery

As mentioned above, the brewery has 11 large tanks for fermentation and conditioning – a mix of 1000L and 2000L. Sonoda-san explained that fermentation and conditioning is done in the same tank, without moving the beer. Local water is used to make the beers and yeast is either an ale yeast or a lager yeast. The initial yeast was originally brought from overseas and since then has been harvested after every fermentation and reused.

Work continues - tank cleaning...

As the tour continued, so did work in the brewery. I asked about dry-hopping. The tanks used at Harvestmoon are closed type, which prohibits directly putting in a bag or hops to dry-hop. Instead, after taking out the yeast, to dry-hop they make a “hop tea” in kegs and then use CO2 to push the tea into the tanks.

...and bottling

Including Sonoda-san, there are only three full time workers in the brewery – plus one guy who comes in to bottle part time.

Small tanks at the back

At the back are two small tanks to hold experimental and seasonal beers – at the time of visiting the brewery was in the middle of making a pumpkin ale.

Some wider shots of the brewery:

From the back corner

This first one was taken from the back corner of the brewery, in front of the boiling tank. With the exception of the boiling tank, mash tun, and hot water tank which are behind the camera and the cold-storage fridge and entrance at the far opposite corner which are hidden by the tanks, you can see the entire room here. It’s compact but very well laid out.

The back tanks

Back tanks. Just to the right of the ladder are the two small tanks and windows to the restaurant, shown below:

Small tanks next to the restaurant windows

One of the things that impressed me about the brewery was just how spotlessly clean and well organised it was. I don’t think that was just for the open day – everywhere was spotless and well organised, which can only come from the brewery habitually being in that state.

Bottling area at the front

Beers are carbonated before bottling and bottled without pasteurisation. The brewery advises drinking within 3 months.

Hot water tank and bottling area

Looking back onto the bottling area and the hot water tank. The mash tun is just to the left of the hot water tank.

Showing off the hops

On the way out Sonoda-san showed off some Japanese Shinshu Wase hops she’d picked at Shiga Kogen a few weeks back. A number of the Japanese breweries joined Shiga Kogen for hop picking this year. These hops will be used in the IPA Harvestmoon is about to brew for November 2009 release.

Inside the fridge

Hops and kegged and bottled beers are kept in cold storage in the fridge next to the entrance to the brewery, in front of the tanks. Temperature is kept around 3 degrees. With the exception of the Shiga Kogen picked hops in the photo above, pellet hops are usually used.

Final view of the tanks on the way out

Brewery seen, it was time to head back for a tasting.

Food, tasting set, and instructions on how to taste

Shown above, the year round range – Pilsner, Belgian White, Pale Ale, Brown Ale, Schwarz – and the food set included with the tour. In the background Sonoda-san explains how to taste beer like a beer judge. 

Seasonal specials

The standard range was followed by the current seasonal specials – a richer Pale Ale and this year’s Barley Wine. Harvestmoon’s Barley Wine was the first ever Barley Wine that I enjoyed drinking and introduced me to both the brewery and the fact that Barley Wine can taste good. Very good to try it again before this years batch runs out.

Finishing off with drinks in the restaurant

After the sampling I couldn’t leave without stopping off in the restaurant and having more beer, tapped straight from the tanks. I do love that Schwarz – rich and dark and tingly on the tongue, with subtle burnt roasted burnt smell; lovely.

The Harvestmoon Brewery website is here. Brewery visits and events are listed on the seminar tab, and there’s a link to buy beer online also.

The Roti’s House website is here and there’s information on how to find the restaurant on Ikspiari’s website here. The restaurant in on the 4th floor, open 11am to 11pm daily (last order 10pm). Phone number is 047-305-5652.

My opinion? Harvestmoon’s beer isn’t that easy to find in Japan – it’s very occasionally on tap in bars like Ushi Tora and Popeye and at festivals, and bottles are only available in a handful of places – so I have to confess I’d only tasted their Barley Wine before doing this tour and didn’t know what to expect, and there were people on the tour who had never tasted Harvestmoon’s beer at all before the sampling. But I was very pleasantly surprised. There isn’t a bad beer in the range - and the Schwarz, Pilsner, seasonal Pale Ale, and Barley Wine were nothing short of fantastic. I can see why the brewery has won so many awards. Given that Harvestmoon beer is difficult to find and the restaurant is only 14 minutes from Tokyo station on the Keiyo line, I’d definitely recommend a trip out there – even if the bottles don’t have mouse ears.

Sekinoichi, home of Iwate Kura Beer (image courtesy of the Sekinoichi website)

Back in August I went to the Ichinoseki beer festival. On the way there I visited the Baeren brewery and beer pub in Morioka – you can read about that here. On the last day of the festival I visited Sekinoichi, maker of Iwate Kura beer, also located in Ichinoseki.

The Ichinoseki beer festival features over 60 Japanese craft breweries and Wataru-san, brewer of Iwate Kura beer, is one of the main organisers. Partly because the brewery staff  are busy at the event and partly because the brewery plays down their involvement in the festival so that other breweries don’t feel there’s any favouritism going on, it wasn’t possible to get inside the brewery during the festival – but I was allowed in to roam around the viewing areas. Not a full brewery tour then – but, as I found out, there’s a lot more at Sekinoichi than just the brewery.

Outside Sekinoichi

As you can see from the map at the top of this article, Sekinoichi is not just a single building – there are the beer and sake “factories”, a large shop, more than one restaurant, and even a museum. The photo above is the entrance to Sekinoichi. The white building in the middle houses the museum and one of the restaurants. To the right (not shown) is the shop, and at the back right corner is…

The Iwate Kura Beer Factory

…the beer factory, as Google translates it from the Sekinoichi website. There’s a restaurant in here too.

The brewery

This is the brewery – as seen from the side viewing room. Below is the brewery taken from the front viewing platform:

The brewery through a fisheye lens

Taken with a fisheye lens so that I could match the diagram showing what all the equipment is:

Brewery plan

Translated from the Japanese: A - Filtration tank; B – Hot water tank; C - Boiling tank; D - Cooling tank; E - Fermentation tank; F - Maturation tank (conditioning tank); G - Boiler.

Conditioning tanks

Here are some of the conditioning tanks. You can also see there’s a kegging and bottling area next to the door also. I have to confess I’m not entirely sure what the two tanks at the bottom left are but they are labelled “Samaru Tank” in Japanese and this page implies they are insulated temperature controlled tanks so I’m guessing they’re used for yeast – but that’s just a guess because I don’t see anywhere for yeast storage. They could be for sake, or conditioning, or anything – I had no-one to ask.

Close-up of the brewing equipment

Close-up of the filtration tank, hot water tank, and boiling tank. And how is this equipment used? 

Diagram illustrating how the beer is made

Well, according to this diagram, the mashing and lautering is done inside A, the filtration tank, and transferred to C – the boiling tank. This is confirmed by the description of the process on Sekinoichi’s website, at the bottom of this page.

Interestingly, it’s quite a different process from Baeren’s system, where mashing and boiling are done in the same tank.

Alcohol available for purchase

Having seen all I could see of the brewery, I made my way to the shop. Sake is also made at Sekinoichi and there is free sampling:

Free sake sampling

Sake is available to buy both in prepacked bottles as well as direct from the tank, bottled fresh:

Sake direct from the tank

Sake sampled, it was onto the museum. There should be a small entrance charge of this – a few hundred yen – but with staff at the festival, it was open for free.

Museum

Inside there are various pieces of old equipment used at the brewery throughout the years.

Climb in the sake tank

This tank was used for making Nihonshu – Japanese sake. You can climb down the ladder and go inside.

Old grain mills

There’s loads of old equipment sitting around. It’s quite fascinating to see…

Old bottling equipment

…though all signs and explanations are in Japanese only.

Restaurant

From the museum to the restaurant. It’s sometimes possible to pick up vouchers near the station or in hotels in the area to get a free small glass of beer if you visit the restaurant. I didn’t have any vouchers but some friends of mine had brought extras and shared them with me – thanks guys (and gals!)

Free beer!

Behind the beer is a cup of water. That’s not as boring as it sounds – the water they serve at the restaurant is the same water they use for the beer,  from the nearby mountain region.

Iwate Kura IPA

Next up, Iwate Kura IPA – and from the food menu:

Beer sashimi

After a few of the “normal” beers, I decided to try something a little bit different:

Passion Ale

Passion ale – a new “beer” made with passion fruit. I found it quite refreshing actually. Main course:

Mochi Fondue

Mochi is rice cake. As well as the mochi, the fondue also came with vegetables and cooked sausage for dipping. Definitely an “interesting” dish - interesting like the last beer:

Something blue

A sparkling fruity beer with natural blue dye. Sold as a “wedding” beer, it’s definitely one of the more unusual beer concepts I’ve tried.

Sekinoichi’s website is here. There are access maps there and you can buy beer online also – the website is all Japanese though.

Surprisingly, Ichinoseki Beer isn’t available in many bars or off licenses in the town. Apart from the brewery, the only places I saw it being sold were the omiyage stores at the station. Shame on Newdays, Lawson and other convenience stores for not stocking the local town beer.

My opinion? Despite not being able to get a good look around the brewery, it was still fascinating to visit Sekinoichi. The town of Ichinoseki is a relaxed place in itself, and wandering around the grounds of Sekinoichi and from building to building is also very relaxing – I almost felt like I’d stepped back in time and was spectating on the past. There’s definitely more to see here than at some other breweries.