Japan's best beers

[nightmare]

Taste-testing a brew for the recession

There's a good reason that beer-makers use barley as a base ingredient. Fermentation only works on sugars, and grains don't contain any. But when a grain gets moist, it germinates, and its sprout contains an enzyme that converts starch into sugar. Some grains have tough husks, others sprout too meekly, but barley is the Goldilocks ingredient, just right for malting.

And just right for taxing. The government takes ¥77 from the sale of every 350-ml can of beer, which it defines as a brew fermented from at least 67-percent malted grains. Back in 1994, Suntory pioneered the tax-skirting quasi-beer market with a 65-percent malt brew called Hop's Draft, categorized as happoshu (sparkling spirits), and Japan's brewers and taxmen have been toying with each other ever since, hiking levies and lowering malt content.

Since 1996, the beeriest happoshu (50- to 67-percent malt) have been taxed as beer, which is why you won't find many of them. All the action these days is at the other end of the spectrum, with dai-san (third segment) drinks that contain little or no malt. Last fall, sales of dai-san beer overtook those of happoshu for the first time, and figures released earlier this month showed that while overall sales for Japan's brewers in February were 9.2 percent down on last year, dai-san shipments jumped 47.3 percent.

Are people turning to pseudo-beers because they cost around half the price of real beer or, as the brewers suggest, because technology and techniques have improved so much that the new drinks are genuinely tasty?

With Sapporo's latest dai-san, Reisei, launching earlier this week, it seemed like a good time for a tasting party.

I gathered a panel of Epicurean pundits and force-fed them a selection of beer approximations. The panel: Bryan Harrell publishes Brews News, an online newsletter about craft beer in Japan. Chris Chuwy, maintains www.boozelist.blog spot.com , listing current tap beers at over 70 bars in Tokyo and Yokohama. Ayako Chujo is the alcohol-powered president of Eat Creative, whose official bio gives her motto as "Beer then wine (or vice versa) and you'll be fine." Tomoko Kono is a finance director who drinks a lot.

We dispensed with blind tasting as the pundits bore equal prejudice against all quasi-beers. It would be an exaggeration to say that the next 90 minutes transformed their beliefs.

Kono suggested that Suntory's Kinmugi (dai-san, 5 percent alcohol, ¥139/350 ml) was "not too bad" and had more body than the other drinks; Harrell conceded that it had a thicker flavor.

Everyone noted the superior aroma of Sapporo's Mugi to Hop (dai-san, 5 percent, ¥139).

Chuwy opined that champagne was like a gassier version of Asahi's Style Free (dai-san, 4 percent, ¥159), which he meant as a criticism, describing champagne as "unnecessary".

Chuwy also bestowed faint praise on Kirin's Tanrei, the nation's favorite happoshu (5.5 percent, ¥159),

by declaring it nicer than Asahi Super Dry (beer, ¥215, a drink about which the late, great beer writer Michael Jackson once gushed, "It's extremely difficult to make a beer [this] flavorless").

More typical reactions included:
- "It's sort of out of focus" (Harrell on Tanrei)
- "It tastes like regular beer after 40 minutes" (Chujo on Tanrei);
- "Feels like I've just woken up and need to brush my teeth" (Chuwy on Reisei, a dai-san brewed from yellow-pea protein, 5 percent, ¥139);
- "It's like chewing paper. It's like they made beer but forgot to put the flavor in. If "Star Trek" made a machine that replicated beer but didn't quite get it right, it would taste like this" (Chuwy on Honnama, happoshu, 5.5 percent, ¥159). "Oooooh, that's not nice." (Kono on Style Free).

After a few rounds, the panel stopped commenting and switched to discussing why anyone would buy this crap.

"If you're going to buy a six-pack of this, why not buy three beers instead?" wondered Harrell.

A lesser draft: Craft-beer aficionado Bryan Harrell tries Asahi's Honnama.

Chujo, who sends her employees on alcohol runs in office hours, suggested that perhaps people don't know the difference.

"My staff always come back with a mix of beers and happoshu — they don't recognize what's what. I take the beer and leave them the happoshu," she said.

Kono argued that some people, such as her mother, prefer the quasi-beers because they're lighter. I should have invited people with more plebeian palates. So the following day, I did. A pair of prototypical Japanese ladies took the same taste test, this time blind and with a real beer added to the mix.

The other panel: Mio Sakai, 35, who is currently job hunting, drinks happoshu every day, Asahi Super Dry on occasion and Corona at parties. Saori Kennedy, 35, runs a yoga studio, says "yogi shouldn't drink, but I do," and thinks Heineken is the best beer.

Sakai thought Sapporo's Mugi to Hop might be Chimay. 'It's a bit heavy, with the smell of an Irish beer, like Guinness," she said.

Kennedy thought Suntory's Kinmugi might be Chimay. "It's fruity and sweet," she said. Both enjoyed Asahi's Honnama, with Sakai saying, "It's my idea of beer," and downing it in one gulp. Kennedy perceptively described it as "like Asahi but lighter."

Sadly for Sapporo, the girls agreed that the new Reisei was awful. Kennedy immediately identified it as a fake beer. Sakai called it "boring" and opined that "there are lots of delicious happoshu recently, but not this one." Joining Reisei at the bottom of the ladies' list was Thailand's Singha beer, which they described as heavy, thick and not really their thing.

While the connoisseurs grudgingly admitted that Tanrei, Kinmugi and Mugi to Hop were the best of a bad bunch, the ladies enjoyed all but Reisei and Singha (support, perhaps, for Sapporo's claim that their new brew is beerlike) and chose Asahi's Style Free and Honnama as the cream of the crop.

One thing on which the brewers, connoisseurs and happoshu-loving ladies agreed is that the near-beers provide nodogoshi, or throat-tickling refreshment. I suggested that nodogoshi might be all people are looking for to clear their pipes after a hard day in the office.

"Nobody cares about that," said Chujo.

"I still like beer," said Harrell.

"Yes," said the ladies.

It takes some hunting to find Japan's best beers

Quick--name Japan's beermakers. If you said Asahi, Kirin and Sapporo, you're off to a good start. Only 200 or so more to go.()
Yes, despite the dominance of industrial beers that all end up tasting the same as they match each other marketing move for marketing move, a growing world of microbrews throughout the archipelago is celebrating the 15th anniversary of Japan's version of the craft.

"Good craft beer is about richness and depth of flavor--call it character, if you will," American Bryan Baird, owner and brewmaster of Numazu, Shizuoka Prefecture-based Baird Beers, says. "It is brewed with a craftsman's mentality, the focus is not on what the 'market' wants, but what the craftsman, in his heart and with his professional acumen, wants to provide.

"[Japan's] industrial beer, as industrial beers go, is outstanding in my opinion...however, it lacks complexity and depth, and it also lacks a certain human spirit."

According to the Japan Craft Beer Association, there are about 250 microbreweries in Japan that have been directly or indirectly influenced by the European brewing tradition. Nippon no Ji-Biiru (Japan's local beers; ASCII Corp., 2,400 yen), meanwhile, lists 229 of the smaller beer companies, ranging from the true craft brews, such as Baird Beers, Isekadoya (Mie Prefecture) and Swan Lake (Niigata Prefecture), to beer designed to be taken home as an omiyage souvenir, such as the light Nikko Beer.

Baird is quick to play down omiyage beer, as is Tatsu Aoki, the proprietor of Popeye, a bar in Ryogoku, Tokyo, that boasts 70 microbrews (mostly Japanese) on tap, served by a passionate staff.

"They say it's made by people who 'sort of drink,'" Aoki tells The Daily Yomiuri at his bar, which has a fanatically devoted clientele. "There are people who drink and people who don't. I don't get how you can 'sort of drink.' They make it as gifts for people who don't normally drink.

"Out of the 250 or so breweries, most were started for reasons that simply had nothing to do with a passion for and commitment to characterful beer. Rather, entry into craft brewing was about attracting tourism, or revitalization of stagnant economic zones...or whatnot," says Baird, whose beers are also available at his Taprooms in Naka-Meguro, Tokyo, and Numazu.

"Most craft breweries in Japan lack a true heart and soul and the beers show it. The industry needs to clear the deadwood and welcome a new batch of seedlings."

Aoki echoed Baird's sentiment.

Japan for years has ranked in the top 10 in terms of volume of beer consumed. (Number One is China.) Though the year-to-year increase for the industrial beers has been on the wane, the microbrew market has increased dramatically--first in the Tokyo metropolitan area, then in the Osaka area--by between 15 percent and 20 percent each year since 2005, with 28,819 kiloliters being produced by 224 recognized microbreweries in 2008, according to a tax office survey. The rise in consumption mirrors that seen in the United States, where the Washington Post reported a 5.8 percent increase in volume for craft beers last year.

So, other than the breweries themselves, where else can you sample these varied, humanistic beverages? A few, such as Iwate Prefecture's Ginga Kogen--a fruity and surprisingly full weizen--or the auburn Yona Yona Ale by Yahho Brewing in Nagano Prefecture, can be found at a wide selection of liquor shops and supermarkets throughout the country. But the majority are specialty items that require a specialty store.

Part of it comes down to hunting: I found the full selections from Coedo Brewery (Saitama Prefecture) and Kujukuri Ocean Beer (Chiba Prefecture) at a liquor store at Lalaport Tokyo Bay in Funabashi, Chiba Prefecture. Coedo's Shikkoku was like no beer I have ever tasted--it lies somewhere between a stout and a porter, yet is somehow lighter. Both the weizen and stout from Kujukuri were flavorful and tasty to the bottom of the bottle.

I also found a selection of Yahho Brewing beers, Nest Beer (Ibaraki Prefecture--try the weizen) and a few others at the Queen's Isetan grocery store chain. Tanakaya in Mejiro, Tokyo, is known for its wide selection of hard-to-find brews. Online, Good Beer (goodbeer.jp) offers the full breadth of the country's craft beers, as well as tasting sets containing a selection from a variety of breweries.

The unfortunate reality, of course, is that these beers tend to be more expensive than their counterparts from the major breweries. So, why pay more?

"Flavor. That's all there is to it," Steve Lacey, who spent many years homebrewing in Australia, says in an e-mail interview. "Of course, the fact that I liked to brew means I developed a strong preference for beer that is full-flavored. So, if I am to spend 1,000 yen on a pint, I'd rather [drink] something that gets my attention all the way to the bottom of the glass, unlike a lot of mainstream lagers that you more or less stop tasting after a few sips."

One of Lacey's recipes, a Belgian Tripel he called Nenmatsu Tripel, was recently produced in limited quantities by Chiba Prefecture's Loco Beer, the home of the nation's first (but not only) brewmistress. The fruity, spicy beer was, as of Wednesday, still available on tap at Popeye, which began serving beer 15 years ago with Niigata Prefecture's Echigo Beer, the first craft beer produced in Japan. The pub now carries a full range of styles, including stouts, porters, barley wines and a variety of ales and lagers, from breweries such as Isekadoya, with its light, genmaicha-tealike Brown Rice Ale, to the coffeelike Sumida Brewing Porter (Tokyo).

"He has an amazing amount of beer knowledge," Aoki says of Lacey. "It's wasted on an amateur. [His] beer could actually be better than that of [most] full-time professional brewers."

So why are there so few good craft beers in a country that has such a high rate of beer consumption? Japanese laws, it seems, have erected barriers--in terms of homebrewing, alcohol production levels and tariffs on ingredients, that make it difficult for a potential craft brewer to start up his or her own business.

Explains Aoki: "Veteran brewers with 10 years or so of experience can't break out on their own, because the required output is too high. [Reportedly, about 60,000 liters a year.] So, they end up always having to work for somebody else and not being able to make the beer they really want to. This has happened. The head brewer at Yahho Brewing wanted to start his own brewery, so he quit. But he couldn't do it in Japan, so he had to move to the States."

The law also places alcohol limits on beer produced at home to 1 percent, something Baird, who trained at the Redhook Brewery in Washington State, likens to "prohibition."

Lacey, too, laments the current situation: "The amateur brewing world is the breeding ground of craft brewers. The U.S. craft beer industry and home brew scene are the biggest and most dynamic in the world, partly because they have grown up hand-in-hand since the late 1970s. Brewers and recipes regularly cross from amateur to professional, and homebrewers have led the rise in a consumer base that appreciates beer with real flavor.

"So how can Japan build up a strong base of skilled brewers without a home brew scene of any size to act as a nursery where folks can learn the basics and discover if they have a passion for brewing or not?"

Says Baird: "The U.S. craft beer market, of course, took root shortly after the legalization of homebrewing and many homebrewers were pioneers in the nascent days of American microbrewing. Would this be the case in Japan if homebrewing were suddenly legalized? I have my doubts. A keen entrepreneurial drive and a limitless passion for beer are the two keys to success in the business of craft brewing. More individuals who possess these two traits need to arrive on the scene here."

But despite this, he still sees a bright future: "In a decade or so, Japan will rival the United States as the most dynamic and interesting market for craft beer in the world."

I'll toast to that.

[shiphtfour]

Very interesting post nightmare! I really enjoyed the Dogo microbrew when I was in Matsuyama. Although Japan might not even come close to the number of microbreweries as the States, there are still some damn good ones!