Ise Kadoya Imperial Smoked Porter (2011)

And I have graduated to the capstone of the evening: the Ise Kadoya Imperial Smoked Porter. I live down the street from the brewery/restaurant but this is my first taste of the season. I'm reminded of how good a porter feels on a cold night. This also marks my first smoked style since I gambled on an Echigo Rauch, a mysterious beverage indeed. Needless to say the style is rescued here. It's bold, black and hoppy. And 7 percent alcohol.

Behold: 

Tomorrow me and the fiance are heading for Nagoya. Many things on the agenda but I'm sure I'll find room for some beer I can't find in Ise. Cheers!

Ise Kadoya Weizen Bock (2011 edition)

I'm home from my school's bounenkai (end-of-year-party / aka "forget the year party") and I'm sipping an Ise Kadoya Weizen Bock, a nice upgrade from the endless flow of Kirin lager supplied by the Ise City Hotel catering staff.


This is one of the styles I haven't had much experience with, but I'm enjoying the light character at the moment. That said, all I can think about is the Imperial Smoked Porter in the fridge. I haven't tried this one since the last release and I'm quite anxious to savor it.

Meanwhile, enjoy this photo of the 2011 Weizen Bock, compared with the previous model:

2011 edition

The slightly-more-Christmassy 2010

Beer number one, boat number eight ... or ... Day one in Hokkaido

Good morning from Chitose, where I'll add this quick update before heading for Sapporo. Satoko's brother lives here, so he picked us up at the airport yesterday and took us around the area, starting at a salmon aquarium that offers look directly in to the Chitose river.

At the many food stalls near the aquarium, I found what became my first craft beer of the trip, a pilsner from Hokkaido Beer Pirkawakka (Googled-found review here).

I washed down the beer with a salmon pizza, and after a pit stop for another quick bite to eat we headed for the hills. Satoko's brother, Kohei, drove us around all afternoon and evening. We thank him very much for spending his day off with us.

Our main stop of the afternoon was Shikotu Lake:

click for full size to read sign board

We rented a paddle boat and set off on our epic 20-minute journey, after the woman at the rental shack laughed at our query about whether we could get to "other side" of the lake. We crossed paths with a couple on Boat Number Eight, who later became the subject of this shot:

click for full size

Further stops included a delicious 100-yen mushroom miso soup, a view point that would have offered a beautiful sunset had it not been overcast, and a toll road that cost nearly as much as the pizza we ordered for dinner after our return to Chitose.

Now, Satoko and I will head for the Big City, where we'll try to balance my quest for craft beer with her less boozy desires.

More to come!

Ise Kadoya Imperial Red Ale (bottled)

This evening I'm enjoying a glass of the 85-IBU Ise Kadoya-led collaboration Imperial Red Ale, which has made rounds at beer bars and festivals over the last few months.

Sadly I couldn't make any of those festivals, but I was able to pick up on this beer a while back at the local craft bar (owned/operated by an Ise Kadoya brewer in his free time).

This beer emerged here in Ise just after I made a trip back to Oregon, where I was surrounded by wonderfully hoppy beers. It was a nice surprise to find this nicely balanced offering coming out of Ise (while Ise Kadoya regularly puts out fantastic beers, not many aim for this particular taste). 

As of now, the beer is for sale in bottles at Ise Kadoya's Biyagura brewpub and it is also available for online order. I haven't been in to Biyagura for drinks for quite a while, but it has been on tap as well for limited runs.

I'm curious to find out how it's being received among domestic drinkers, so I'll ask around next time I get a chance.

For those who have tried one, how did you like it?

If you haven't tried it yet, I'd move quickly ... this might not be around for long.

Craft beer at my local Circle K

It has not been the best night in terms of random luck -- my iPhone had died and the craft beer bar was closed when we arrived after yakiniku -- but the silver lining is that I found craft beer cans at yet another Circle K in town. It seems the word is spreading. It's now up to three Circle K's here in Ise that are selling Yona Yona Ale and Ginga Kogen American Pale Ale. My post dead-phone stop into the Circle K nearest to my place turned out positive indeed.

My iPhone, meanwhile, is still looking very much dead.

But back to that American Pale Ale. Beer lovers know that the "American" in American Pale Ale refers to the style of pale ale -- in this case, a bitter type pale ale. I brought a few over to a poker game the other night and got some interesting reactions from the international crowd. But indeed it was the Americans who assumed American meant "watery" in this case. They seemed to think a Japanese brewer was trying to reproduce that ever-so-American Budweiser sensibility.

Between hands, I tried to explain that this was a Japanese craft brewer and that this beer was a special thing to find here in Ise. The Yona Yona was easier to sell, since its name and label make it stand out a bit, but even among American citizens craft beer is poorly understood.

I'll have to try harder to spread the word. Maybe I should have shared?

Cans on the Radio

My homestate public radio station back in Oregon just did a report on craft beer in cans. Not only is it fun to read the text of the story and pretend you're a radio reporter (just me?), it's a good look at the changing attitudes on the topic.

On my most recent trip to Portland for my brother's wedding, the stigma was alive and well with one of the groomsmen, who said he felt that craft in cans was simply not right.

In the article, a pub owner points this out: 

"As of this week, there are 131 craft brewers nationwide that are either canning, or in the late stages of canning. Yeah, it’s a trend, I would say the biggest trend in craft-brewing right now"

It further lists reasons for accepting cans:

-Keeps the beer fresher

-Lighter, easier to transport

-Easier to recycle

Any downside? Besides the stigma, the article notes that it is more expensive to run a canning line, which may make it difficult to the smaller of the small brewers.

Here in Japan, we have seen a few brewers produce cans. Yona Yona was on the shelves in cans when I got here in 2007, and they are definitely among the leaders. I have recently seen Coedo and Echigo beers in cans even out here in Inaka Mie. It would be great to see more Japanese brewers follow suit, especially the other mainstays leading the field already in quality and availability.

In Japan, the stigma issue is probably larger than back in the states. Already, craft beer is seen as foreign, exotic, and essentially "not beer-like." That's because the image of "beer" is a light lager, golden in color, with 30 percent head for good measure. Many craft producers here treat their product like it's some sort of holy nectar, adorning their cans with colorful foil toppings (I'm looking at you, Kinshachi).

Of course, I balance my bite here with general respect toward the still-maturing industry. I'll accept anything that's good, in a glass or a bottle or a can.

I'm still here -- and random beer discoveries

My most recent post was on March 9, two days before the 9.0 earthquake and tsunami brought devastation to Tohoku. For a while after, I was quiet on Twitter, and for longer, I've been quiet here on this blog. I cannot claim that I posted so often before, but for a while I simply did not feel like coming on and talking about my most recent beer samplings or the newest Ise Kadoya release.

That's not to say I did not drink. My school's new-school-year-staff-change party went down as scheduled, with plenty of beer going around. I've been frequenting Twelve, the makeshift craft beer hangout opened by Masaya from Ise Kadoya in what used to be his first-floor living room. And from time to time I've visited Ise Kadoya for the 2-hour nomihoudai for less than 2,000 yen.

Meanwhile, I have launched Mie Life Magazine, an online only bilingual magazine for Mie prefecture. It has been fun, but also incredibly challenging, as it has been an all-volunteer operation. I have not had much luck finding contributors to write, and if it is only me and one or two others then I feel it lacks a range of voices required to make it interesting. Further, I need Japanese writers contributing, but so far it has been difficult to find them.

For what it's worth, I've written two columns on craft beer for that magazine. Readers of this blog would not find anything new there. The columns target those who don't know much about craft beer. I hope to reach people who just come across the magazine and maybe they'll expand their beer selection.

As summer rolls on, I hope to return to this blog. I'll begin with some recent discoveries:

CRAFT TO GO AT NAGOYA STATION
Seijoishii is a foreign food store with a decent craft / international beer selection. I picked up some Coedo for the train along with some Kona Brewing selections for the fridge. They also had Yona Yona and a few offerings from Hokkaido Brewing. that were popular with sweet-beer-liking friends.You can find this shop just outside the Hirokoji exit of Nagoya station.

MOKU MOKU - NAGOYA
Upstairs on the 13th floor of the JR tours you'll find a restaurant by Moku Moku farms of Mie. You can enjoy a buffet lunch or dinner (organic food, plenty of options for meat lovers and vegetarians) along with some craft beer made in Mie. There were two beer options on the menu along with a couple of seasonal selections in bottles available. They do not seem to offer their beer in bottles (or cans) to go so you have to go in for a meal to try it. There are similar restaurants in Mie (Tsu, Iga, Matsusaka) and one in Osaka.


ISE KADOYA SEASONALS
I have been enjoying the Blonde Ale, which seems to me more bitter than previous years (though I could be wrong). Meanwhile, I know the Imperial Red Ale has been making the rounds. I really like this beer. It was a result of a collaboration of brewers from craft makers around Japan who converged at Ise Kadoya for a sort of beer-making clinic. I wish I could have been there for that! If you have not tried this yet, keep an eye out.

CONVENIENT CRAFT?
A Circle K in Ise has recently started stocking Yona Yona ale, and a different Circle K in town sometimes has Coedo options. Is this a new trend? I hope so. I'd love to see Yona Yona return to the shelves of my local grocery store (it left two years ago). I would also love to see a wider selection, of course, be it cans of Coedo, Echigo, or more brewers willing to go can and go national. It would also be nice if our friends at Ise Kadoya would expand their can options.

That about does it for today. I'm heading in to Ise Kadoya's Biyagura tonight for some birthday drinks, and I'll report anything new here tomorrow.

Cheers!

Post Irish day, an English IPA

I've been busy of late working on the launch of Mie Life Magazine, a free, online-only (for now) general interest magazine for this little prefecture I call home. Since the operation has nearly no money to spend, we're relying on volunteers. So far, a few people have been helping out a lot but we're looking to add several more people as we prepare to get going.

The magazine will be at the url mielifemagazine.com (for now it's just a parked domain). I'll update here on the blog when it's ready to roll. Naturally, besides generally editing the thing, I'll be writing about beer. I'm planning a monthly column on craft beer plus I'll try to spotlight the craft beer scene in Mie in larger features.

---

Back to the beer.

This weekend featured Ise's annual St. Patrick's Day party, which happens every year in early March. It's part of a series of St. Patrick's Day events and parades around Japan. Ise's naturally, is pretty small, but it draws a decent crowd and this year that crowd included Ireland's ambassador to Japan, who made a speech and took part in the day's festivities.

I was along for the ride too, mostly taking photos but also chatting with people about beer and the magazine project and all kind of things. A few of us skipped the official after party and headed for the beer bar, where were had a couple of beers to add to the decently large total of parade beers (not many were drinking ... me, a crew of Irish guys, plus a few older guys).

Overall, the weekend left me feeling a bit ill. Too much Irish fun, perhaps.



But with Wednesday comes my first beer of the week, part of the recovery. And the bonus: These beers come from beyond my reach in Mie. They are omiyage from Yokohama, one being an English style IPA from Yokohama Brewery and the other being an Aooni English style IPA from Yaho Brewing (maker's of the more widely available Yona Yona Ale).

At the moment, I've cracked open the Aooni, which is a nice, subdued IPA. Much like when I tried the Tokyo Black at Keg Nagoya, I can trace the mainstay Yona Yona in the background, but the bitterness comes through nicely.

I'll save the Yokohama IPA for another time (read: in about 10 minutes).

Cheers to all ... and I hope your late winter / early spring transition treats you nicely.

Non-beer update: A few snow pictures

Ise rarely gets snow ... I can't recall any substantial snowfall last year. On Friday we got a bit that stuck around most of the day, and this afternoon came the sequel. It's blanketing the ground, and roads, with a slushy mess, though trains and buses appear to be running smoothly (edit: reports of train delays have been issued).

Here are a few cellphone shots. Just to prove it snowed in Ise.

The school parking lot. 

We lost our English club students one by one to early departures for home.

 From the bus. I called shotgun, apparently.

 Update: A few more pictures below:

Unazuki beer from Toyama

One of the great things about admitting to friends and family that you're a beer nerd is that they tend to think of you when they're on the road or otherwise come across new varieties of beer. This is especially wonderful since I live in rural Japan and it's generally difficult to discover far-flung brews.

A week ago, I tried two beers from Helios in Okinawa, including a very nice pale ale that was less pale and more so copper. It was a very medium body, not super hoppy, but balanced enough to earn a high mark in my amateur beer reviewer head.

At the moment, I'm enjoying another score, an alt style beer from Unazuki in Toyama-ken. It pours a dark copper color, similar to the Helios pale, and the first sip offered a nice, dry finish after a light caramel malt and hop presence. Now that it's warmed up a little, I'm getting a bit more fruity tones and the beer is growing on me.

Another score today: A book on Japanese craft beer from the local library. It informs that Unazuki is form Kurobe-shi, where its beers source malts and other local ingredients. Their lineup, while not extensive, has won acclaim at some beer festivals.

A visit to this area is now officially on my list-of-places-to-go, which exists only in my head. Unazuki has a restaurant that features their beer plus a curry made to go with beer.

Has anyone out there been to Kurobe or tried this beer?

Beer Free February

As February dawns, I am looking to cut back spending on beer after a few weeks of having quite a bit (thanks to the discovery of a new craft beer bar in little old Ise).

But my half-hearted and vague plans to "cut back" are nothing compared the efforts of Matt at Beer Free February. He has pledged to stay completely dry -- free of beer or any other alcohol -- for the whole month.

The real kicker is this: he is doing it as a fund-raiser. Check out the website, track his progress, and put down some money for a good cause. So far, he has raised $100 toward a goal of $3,000, which he describes as enough to sponsor a child for 10 years of schooling.

Cheers to Matt, and good luck. 

Japan Times features a German brewmaster in Otaru

Imported beer? Make that an imported brewmaster.

The Japan Times has an interesting feature on Frankfurt native Johannes Braun of Otaru Beer. In 1994, when the craft wave began in Japan thanks to law revisions, Braun was recruited to move to Otaru to create beer in the traditional styles he learned growing up.

Although he's been going strong for years and the beer is well established in the North (so I read), don't expect to find a bottle at your local liquor shop. According to the article it's only available within a 100 kilometer radios of Otaru (make travel plans accordingly).

Braun chimes in on a number of hot topics in the Japan craft world, including the sameness in offerings from the big companies, consumers who see beer as a starter to clear their throats, and a tax system that makes quality beer more expensive than swill when it should be the other way around.

Cheers to Braun for giving me one more reason to want to travel to (move to?) Hokkaido.

Free Style Beer Garden Twelve - Ise's new craft beer bar

A quick look at the new craft beer bar in Ise, featuring photos taken on my cell phone (forgot my real camera at home). 

The bar, which used to be the owners' living room, is in this nondescript building near Iseshi Station. They still live upstairs.

Sakakibara-san, who still has his day job with Ise Kadoya as a buyer and brewer, stands behind the bar. He's a nice guy and a beer lover who thinks Japanese brewers need to step up their game. 

Above the bar, you can still see the remains of the wall that used to belong to the bathroom. 

  

The menu features a variety of beers from around Japan and the world. Prices are good for craft, with a featured IPA from Brewdog coming in at 600 yen for a glass. 

The beer from Brewdog comes in what I describe as plastic orbs, which are housed inside the casing shown in the second shot.

Here's a Hardcore IPA from brewdog. I like the Punk a bit better.

There are eight beers on tap, but Sakakibara-san hopes to make the 12 in the bar's name come true one day.

With the new year comes a new drive for craft

Since I've been home (home meaning Japan) from my trip to Oregon, I've had a few chances to try craft beer, and except for a New Year's Eve marathon that went from Caldera to Asahi to hangover, I have avoided standard beers and instead looked for ways to branch out.

I have not been disappointed. My girlfriend's father, aware that I am a beer fan, stocked the fridge at their house ahead of my visit on New Year's day. It was a thoughtful effort, which included a nice variety, but craft beer was not represented.. I of course graciously accepted what was served, but the conversation inevitably led to what kind of beer I really like. I also shared a Caldera IPA which I had brought from Oregon. They liked it, despite its bitterness blowing everything else on the table out of the prefecture.

For my return visit on the second, the daughters of the family had been instructed to obtain some Yona Yona Ale. To add to this, I brought along a few bottles of Ise Kadoya as well. It was nice to pour everyone a sampling and decide which ones we liked best. Ise Kadoya's Pale and Brown proved popular. The seasonals were a bit too festive for my taste, but among them were a decent Blonde Ale and a just-barely-too-sweet Yuzu Ale.

On a following weekend trip to Nagoya, I popped in to a liquor shop in Sakae which sells Kinshachi Beer and picked up a few offerings. I liked the IPA but ended up giving the others away without trying them (there will be a next time). On the Nagoya trip, I also visited Keg for the first time. It was easy to find thanks to the Beer in Japan app, and I was pleased to start my session with a Shiga Kogen IPA. I had a few more offerings, all that I had not tried before, and enjoyed them all. My only regret was that I couldn't stay longer (there will, of course, be a next time).

More recently, a friend and I hit up Ise Kadoya's Biyagura for a 2-hour nomihoudai (available on the regular menu at under 2,000 yen). There were three seasonals on tap, including the aforementioned Blonde Ale, a "Nut's Brown Porter" (sic) and a ginger flavored beer. The Blonde is nice and I quite enjoyed the Nut's Brown, but the ginger was best kept in sampler size. Of course, after two hours, we were decently drunk and quite satisfied. The brown and pale are always there for you when last order comes around.

In all, I have mostly avoided the standard beers while trying a wider variety of craft than I had normally availed myself too. I hope I can keep it up. Perhaps it's time to branch out to a web order from Ezo?


(I'll add some pictures to this post later)

Heady travels in the land of beer

During my two weeks in Oregon, I had but one (maybe more like one-half) can of Weasel Piss, the nickname my brother Phil and I use for mainline beer. In this case, it was a Pabst Blue Ribbon, partially consumed and then slapped from by hands by a smoking bartender as I (drunkenly and illegally) tried to carry it from a Pendleton bar to the sidewalk (oops).


(Disclaimer: I've been living in Japan for 3.5 years, and open container rules don't operate ... guess I was a bit rusty? Also you can drink in a car as long as you aren't driving that day, in which case it's zero tolerance.) 

Our choice to go to that bar in the first place was indeed a mistake, as we had already consumed plenty of booze from the Prodigal Son Brewery and Pub a few blocks east (this was a amid a series of mistakes that make up a larger story to be told at a later time).

But the bad decisions made on that night are overshadowed, perhaps, by the overall walk away from mainstream beer into an exclusive craft beer diet (I also did not drink an ounce of soda/pop on the trip ... a first for me).

Where better than Portland, Oregon, and a couple other Oregon towns, to stay on a The Path of good beer. On my first day in Portland, Phil and his fiancee and I went to the Hopworks Urban Brewery for a delicious pizza a couple of pints. My first choice was my first craft crush: IPA. Among the three of us, we sampled about five different offerings from HUB, and all were very nice.

HUB's claim to fame, besides the good beer they produce, is that it is an organic and sustainable operation, concepts that fit in perfectly in Portland. The place was busy on an early-vacation-period weeknight, with a 30 minute wait for tables in the dining room. Over in the bar, though, you can seat yourself if you find a table. Phil's fiancee, Julia, managed to score a table after a successful bout of hovering near a guy who looked to be almost done (he had two growler's full of delicious-looking beer).

We tapped in to the growler scene ourselves down Interstate 84 in Pendleton. My mother recently moved from 10 minutes out of town to a loft overlooking downtown. Imagine a loft, then think bigger. The cascading space features high ceilings with vents snaking across them, gaping windows looking out on a snow-covered main street, and a loft-within-the-loft to break up the vast real estate spanning from the kitchen to the eastern wall.

And to top off the beautiful surroundings, the apartment sits a few minutes away from the freshly opened (well, fresh as in it opened in 2010) Prodigal Son Brewery and Pub, at present Pendleton's only craft brewery (bar chat revealed rumors of a possible brewery in the works, though noting is official). The large seating area, though rarely full when we visited, has a very homey ambiance, and we felt very comfortable sitting down on chairs and couches around what we might call a coffee table if it wasn't in a brewpub.

In all we made three visits here, plus one growler fill for the road (the road back to the apartment, not the one back to Portland -- I haven't totally forgotten Oregon liquor laws).

I had a short fling with their IPA, boldly declaring it my favorite IPA of the trip so far, though this was later retracted when I met a Stone Ruination IPA at a bottle shop in Portland.

Prodigal Son is picking up steam as their beers are making the trip to Portland-area tap houses and getting noticed in the amid the crowded craft scene in Oregon.

My eventual favorite of the bunch, the Bruce/Lee Porter, was recently honored with the "Satori Award" for 2010 on an Oregon beer blog. 

The next stop on my beer journey was Corvallis, where I attended Oregon State University and where my dad and stepmother live. Corvallis now boasts two local brewpubs (in addition to a pair of northwest chain McMenamins locations). For a late lunch one day, I headed to the only one I hadn't been to: Flat Tail Brewing.

Here, I went directly for the tasting tray, which featured eight beers (seven by Flat Tail and one guest beer from Ninkasi of Eugune). I found the line-up very enjoyable, and ended up picking the Amber as my favorite owing to its wonderful balance.


One brewpub per town was not the end of my craft beer experience in Oregon. Even trips to the supermarket feature a wide selection of craft beer (convenience stores, too, stock a few varieties beyond Bud Light).

For an even larger selection, I made two trips to Belmont Station, a bottle shop with a tap room attached. Being a Japan beer blogger, I inquired about what Japanese beer they had available or have had in the past. No sign or memory of Ise Kadoya, though I believe it's available in another shop in town. Also nothing from Baird, though they guy at the register said they used to have it. He said it didn't sell very well. This was a little surprising, so I asked if he had any idea why. He did not. My guess could be that if people are looking for a beer from Japan, they want something that screams "JAPAN" - and perhaps the Western name isn't Japanesey enough. Or something. I could be way off. For whatever reason, only a small selection of Hitachino Nest shares space with Asashi Super Dry in the Japan section of the "other" category in the world beer area.

Now, it's back to a rotation of Yona Yona, Ise Kadoya, and whatever else I can get my hands on without dropping too much cash.

Today, it shall be exactly that at a sukiyaki dinner. We got six Yona Yonas and a host of Ise Kadoya options, ranging from the standard pale and brown ales to a seasonal maple cinnamon offering. 

I'll return later with a post looking ahead to the new year, which may reveal a bold New Year's resolution that will probably be impossible to keep. Cheers!