Craft beer in Japan

There’s an old joke about American beer, but it applies equally in Japan.

Q: Why is Japanese beer like having sex in a canoe?

A: They’re both fucking close to water.

This tells you what you need to know about most Japanese beers. The industry is dominated by the “big four” lagers, Asahi, Kirin, Sapporo and Suntory, which are uniformly dull and largely indistinguishable. Not actively unpleasant, and often just the thing on a hot summer’s eve, but hard to get excited about when you know that’s what you’ll be offered at ninety five percent of shops and restaurants in the country. I can’t really do any better than the late, great beer writer Michael Jackson’s assessment of Asahi when he said “It is very difficult to make a beer this tasteless”.

Japanese craft beer: celebrating diversity since 1994! (Dogo beer, Matsuyama, Ehime Prefecture)

Ten great Japanese breweries

These are ten of my favourite breweries in Japan. Craft beer here has some interesting characteristic, and the one that recurs over and over again is innovation. In Europe it sometimes feels like brewing is hamstrung by tradition, no more so than in Germany where a centuries-old Purity Law restricts the ingredients in beer to just four; malt, hops, barley and water. Meanwhile, Japanese breweries are merrily throwing all sorts of exciting things into their beer, from green tea to lemons, to make drinks which might not be to everyone’s taste, but are certainly breaking new ground in the brewing world.

Doppo’s Dunkel, Peach Pils and Muscat Pils