Moving North

I last posted from the week of my wedding, way back in March. Life as a married person has been fairly smooth, though as opposed to "settling down" we are getting ready to change jobs and move very soon. While our plans are not totally decided, we are moving to Sapporo in Hokkaido.

Of course, I will keep this blog going, and you'll probably notice a shift toward Hokkaido beers and the scene in Sapporo. On that topic, I just came back from a quick trip to Sapporo, and on this occasion I visited two craft beer establishments.

One was Adanonki, a used book store that has two taps and a nice selection of bottles. The atmosphere is very laid back, the location is convenient, and the 11 Pale Ale from Akita's Aqula was fantastic.

The second place, Kalahana, was (like Adanonki) featured in the Japan Beer Times Sapporo article from May 2011. We were actually walking down the covered street it sits on with plans to dine elsewhere, but the gravitational force of craft beer pulled me in. My wife, despite not being a big fan of the average beer, enjoyed a cider, which Kalahana wisely features. The food was nice too. This time we opted for a Greek salad, chicken and chips, and onion rings. Not long ago, on a previous visit to Hokkaido, I went to Otaru Beer's Leibspeise in Sapporo, an experience I wrote about for JapanTourist. On the same trip, I also stopped in to Beer Bar North Island, where I enjoyed two seasonal IPAs. 

There are still other places to check out in Sapporo and further afield in Hokkaido, including one place in my likely-neighborhood-to-be that may have hand pump Yona Yona. Stand by or urgent updates on this topic.

KANSAI SCENE 

Meanwhile, I wrote an article that appears in this month's Kansai Scene magazine about the craft beer scene in the region. It doesn't go too deep into the details, but I hope it provides a nice overview. [Note: as of this writing, the photo that appears with the article on the website is clearly incorrect. You can see how the article was presented in the printed version by clicking on the page gallery.]

In doing interviews for that article, I ended up with a lot more information than could fit into the article. Over the next couple of weeks I will release some of that content. Stay tuned!

From Oregon, with beer

I may have mentioned my fiancee once or twice on the blog, but indeed I am getting married very soon. To celebrate the occasion, my family is joining us in Japan, starting today with my brother and his wife and my mother and her husband. My brother Phil and his wife Julia are staying at my place, and they brought along many fine gifts, including these Oregon beers:

Although he was exhausted, my brother and I enjoyed a couple of these already, and it's nice to have a taste of home. Phil was wearing a matching sweatshirt:

I also got this T-shirt, which I'll proudly wear to an upcoming social function (not my wedding, though maybe the after party?):

Overall, I'm very happy to be with family. It's great that nice beer can be involved as well. I'll stop here, as I've got a long week ahead, and I still haven't finished buying beer for the after party.

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!

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!

JapanBrew heads to Oregon, where the beer flows like wine ...

When the temperatures in Ise dip to those just-above-freezing levels, and a dry cool breeze moves in from the northwest, I know its time to get out of here, across the Pacific and to the Northwest.

Just two more days at work and I'll be on the road.

I was born in Eastern Oregon, down the interstate a few hours from Portland, a craft-brewing powerhouse that boasts a number of beer-related statistics, helpfully furnished by the city's tourism wing:

• Portland has more breweries than any other city in the world. There are 30 craft breweries within the city limits; 38 in the Portland metro area.
• According to the Oregon Brewers Guild, no matter where you are in Portland, you're never more than 15 minutes from a craft brewery.
• Among "hopheads" (beer lovers), Portland's nicknames include "Beervana," "Brewtopia" and "Munich on the Willamette."
• Portland is home to the nation's best-attended beer bash: the Oregon Brewers Festival. More than 50,000 people enjoy this annual riverfront event, which takes place the last full weekend of July.
• Portland has a 3 percent market share of the more than 1,400 breweries and brewpubs in the United States. 

And while I cannot claim Portland as my real home town, I can claim Oregon and the Northwest in general. My first sip of beer came at age 17, on my birthday, in the form of a can of Natty Ice or something sinister like that (my older brother, on summer break from university, was the provider).

Through my days at Oregon State University in Corvallis, I developed a taste for craft beer, though I had my share of Pabst Blue Ribbon along the way.

Now, every trip home is a chance to try something new. So many places in Portland have craft beer on tap or in bottles, and even if you went in at noon for a sandwich, you'll find yourself tempted by the beer cooler.

My three-city tour (Portland, Pendleton and Corvallis) of Oregon will be, at least in part, beer-fueled. In Portland, where my older brother and his fiancee live, I have the on-the-ground reality of those aforementioned statistics. In Pendleton, where my mother lives, I can look forward to my first look at the newly opened Prodigal Son Brewery and Pub downtown. Even Corvallis, where my father and stepmother live, has something new, in the form of the Block 15 Brewery and Restaurant. (correction: Block 15 opened a few years back. The new brewpub in Corvallis is Flat Tail.)

All this beer talk, though exciting, does draw attention from the fact that the main reason for the visit is to see family, who put up with me living on the other side of the world. But I think the quality of our time together will be heightened thanks to the beer (and food) culture of our cities and towns.

As much as I can, I'll report on my trip from the road. To other winter travelers, have a safe, enjoyable holiday.

Beer in North Korea - Digging Deeper

The beer in North Korea post prompted a couple of replies via Twitter:

Says@chuwyboy :

@JapanBrew They took apart a British brewery and shipped it all over to the north. Ironic thing was the brewery wasnt very god to start with

And from@beerinjapan

@JapanBrew I've been to North Korea and had that beer. NK isn't featured in my Beer in Korea app tho :)

Chuwy's post references the story told in this article from The Wiltshire Times. It leads off with this:

The Ushers brewery in Trowbridge used to produce award-winning traditional British real ales. After an extraordinary journey, it is now being used to brew a beer dubbed the "Pride of Pyongyang" in North Korea.

The article goes on to tell the rather amazing tale of how the brewery was taken apart and shipped to North Korea, where it was reassembled and put to work churning out DPRK beer. The people involved in the sale, from the brewery's former owner to a German go-between, recount the details of the exchange.

For one more angle on this exciting story, can we find any details in the WikiLeaks trove?

Beer in (North) Korea?

A New York Times article, retelling a Western scholar's reports of conditions in North Korea amid the recent tensions, contains this tidbit:

A beer factory was operating, however, and the visitor pronounced the Taedong River beer, a local brand, “very drinkable.”

Turns out, a Google query leads to plenty of info about the brew. A Wikipedia page describes the brewery's beginnings. A BBC article from 2009 tells of a TV ad for the beer, which was marketed as "Pride of Pyongyang." There are YouTube videos and a host of other info I have yet to read or watch.

Has anyone out there sampled this stuff?

Meanwhile, here is the commercial -

Beer in Korea

Two weeks ago, I downloaded an iPhone application for studying Hangul, the Korean writing system. Two hours ago, I downloaded Beer in Korea, the app for finding craft beer. The 10 minutes I spent browsing the beer app trumps the time spent on the Hangul app by roughly 9 minutes.

So maybe I won't be reading any Hangul, but if I can find the time, I might be trying an interesting beer.

My time in Korea will be so limited,, outside of perhaps one afternoon, that I have not been too worried about learning Korean. Multi-lingual signage, the help of friends and intuition should steer me just fine (I hope).

The trip revolves around a wedding ceremony for two friends who live in my little town in Mie. He is Japanese and runs a nice little bar in town (Premium Malts on tap; Corona, Sam Adams among bottled choices). She is Korean, and teaches her native tongue in a classroom adjacent to the bar.

They already tied the knot here in Japan, but in lieu of a formal ceremony, the bond was celebrated by a surprise party at the bar.

Now, the formal part comes in Korea. A few dozen friends of the couple from Japan are making the trip across the Sea of Japan (aka East Sea if you're Korean) to attend the wedding.

It marks my first trip to Korea, and aside from the wedding I am very much looking forward to limited exploring, eating and drinking.

And while my Hangul skills are certainly suspect, at least I have Beer in Korea to guide me as best it can.


---

Practically speaking, although my trip comes next week, I can already endorse the Beer in Korea app. Even the background information in the app served as a nice primer about what I might encounter, and the frank descriptions make clear what bars to hit and which to miss. Whether or not I'll get to any of the listed bars on this trip is yet to be determined. But either way, I'm glad to have the app in the books.

Dry Days ... Kansai Scene article ... Blog Comment followup

Ever since the second-to-last Ise Kadoya nomihoudai, I've been dry in terms of craft beer. This has not been on purpose, but funds have been tight and supply limited down here in Mie.

It has also been a busy season at my real job, thanks to speech contest season. The kids in my high school's English club have to practice daily to prepare for their contests. It's this time of year that it actually feels like a proper job. So I really cannot complain.

In other personal news, back in the summer I took a trip to Gifu and Nagano for a hike and visit to a traditional town. I posted back then about trying a Kisoji Beer at 11 a.m. A non-beer focused look at that trip is in the October issue of Kansai Scene magazine. Take a look here.

Money will continue to be tight in the coming weeks as I look ahead to a mid-month trip to Korea for the wedding of some friends. Of course, I'll seek out some craft beer over there and report back.

Thanks to the commenters (here and on Facebook) about the last couple posts. As for the non-alcoholic beer -- I do see the value in a decent non-alcoholic beer for someone who cannot consume alcohol but likes the taste of the drink without it. Though I guess if it were me as the designated driver, I'd probably vie for some other soft drink instead of some kind of mainline zero percenter. I would be curious to try a non-alcoholic craft beer though.

Kisoji Beer and the Mountains

I travel because I like to travel. But as an added incentive, I know that as I explore more nooks and crannies of Japan, I'll find new, potentially interesting beer.

On a recent trip to the Kiso region in southern Nagano, in a tourist-infested post town on the old Nakasendou route from present-day Tokyo to Kyoto, I found Kisoji Beer, made in Nagiso-machi and available around the area.


The town, Magome (pictured above), is perched on a hillside, its main street lined soba restaurants, cafes and souvenir shops. Also, packed with tourists. We walked half the distance of the town's main drag, and already I had seen loads of shops selling Yona Yona from Shinshu. At the top of the hill, a liquor shop had that plus something else that caught my eye: the blue can of Kisoji Beer.

It was 11 a.m., but I had to try one. Should have tried two. I went for the pale ale, which was bitter, sure, but there wasn't much to it. Or maybe the early hour meant my tasting system was not fully firing.

After a cold soba lunch, we walked through the town again and I went for a Shinshu blonde ale. This was pretty tasty: a good combination of bitter and smooth.

This was followed by a quick bus ride to Magome Pass, followed by a two hour hike along the Nakasendou trail to another little post town in the mountains, Tsumago. Tsumago has been fully restored to look like it did in the Edo period. There are still plenty of tourists, but not as many as in Magome. The restoration and lack of crowds makes for a very pleasant post-hike evening.

Sadly, at the evening taiko/drama/dance performance in the center of town, the only beer available was also traditional: Asahi Super Dry.

Hunting for IPA at the Great Japan Beer Festival

At half passed four, we walked to the station in front of the Kyocera Dome along with dejected fans of the Orix Buffaloes, who had just taken a 9-2 beating courtesy of the Softbank Hawks.

We were in a decidedly better mood, having just descended from the Sky Hall, high in the Dome's upper quarters, where Day 2 of the Great Japan Beer Festival was winding down.

Besides the buzz from a day of sampling craft beers, we also could hold our heads high knowing that on Monday evening, we would take in a Hanshin Tigers game. The Tigers, in second place in the Central League just behind the powerhouse Giants, were in a much better position to come out ahead over the slumping Carp of Hiroshima.

Back upstairs, in the curving Sky Hall, beer enthusiasts of all stripes were finishing the day, some in better shape than others. Security staff in orange shirts kept the peace by making sure people did not sit -- or even squat -- on the floor. Tap operators in Official Orange Shirts were either lonely or busy, since at the late hour of the event most people had identified winners and losers and were heading for one last sip of their favorite.

Not that you could reasonably expect to have tried every beer available in one day. With well over 100 choices, we decided early to approach with caution and some level of discrimination. We tried some fruity stuff, but I quickly scanned for IPAs. Then we started finding brands we knew, including some from back home. Then, we found the Minoh taps. Until yesterday, I had only heard of Minoh, an Osaka-based brewery. The Minnoh menu included a Weizen, a Pale Ale, a Stout, a Real Ale Coffee Stout, a Real Ale Lucky 13 IPA, and a potato beer called "Spud Suds." All were pretty good, but of course I'm a sucker for IPA.

END OF PART 1
(since it is almost time to head toward Koshien for the Tigers game.)

Drink the culture

My father's visit to Japan has already included a lot of drinking. Here's a rundown:

Monday: Beer, wine and nihonshu with a colleague
Tuesday: Beer (not craft beer) with friends
Wednesday: Ise Kadoya's nomihoudai

So today, Thursday, we're taking it easy. We've decided not to drink. But that plan might change, as I collected a few beers as birthday presents and they're right there in the fridge.

But I could let those fridge beers linger there a little longer and re-charge, since the Great Japan Beer Festival in Osaka is just around the corner. My father and I, along with a friend, are hitting up the festival on Sunday. If anyone out there is going to be around, leave a comment and perhaps our paths will cross amid the taps.

Still here

As I write this I'm sipping on a Yona Yona Ale, one of the few micros widely distributed across Japan. Here in Ise, it's sold at a few grocery stores and even one convenience store.

I've neglected this blog for a few weeks, during which I did not really try anything new in the beer world, even from the Big Five. I saw some chatter about a decent offering from Sapporo, but several scans of area store shelves turned up nothing. Perhaps it didn't make as far as Mie.

But my vacation from Good Beer should be coming to an end soon. First of all, the Ise Kadoya nomihoudai night should be going next Wednesday, meaning an hour or two of all-access taps including a line-up of guest beers.

Then, I'm hoping to hit up the Great Japan Beer Festival in Osaka, which takes place over the three-day weekend this month.

Along for the ride will be my dad, who gets into Japan on Monday for a short visit. Besides sampling quality beer, we hope to take in a Hanshin Tigers game and perhaps visit some touristy spots around the Kansai area.

Now that things are picking up again, I'll try to be on the blog and on Twitter with any relevant updates.

Cloudy Recollection

Rainy season has begun, announced here in Mie by a steady cloud cover since Sunday and then confirmed by the official, seemingly unnecessary, declaration by the government weather bureau.

I'm sure some brewers have already thought of the idea of a "Rainy Season Ale" or something along those lines, but regardless of names, the muggy, wet weeks to come will certainly be aided by a few good beers.

On Wednesday, at Ise Kadoya's nomihoudai night, I sampled a few beers from around Japan. Unfortunately I sampled a few too many and left without the menu which has details about the guest beers. But I do recall that there was a decent brown ale from Tochigi on the guest list.

The event returns this week, but I am not sure now if I will make it. If I do I will shoot for a more documentary approach (in contrast to last week's marathon two-hour get-fuzzy-based approach).

Meanwhile, the next several weeks will see trips to Kyoto/Osaka and perhaps even Tokyo. I hope to include some beer stops while traveling around and will include any findings here. Recommendations are welcome, but I'll also surely tap the Beer in Japan iPhone app.

In the last several months, I have hit the bars a bit too much and I have been feeling it in the wallet. I am officially going on a bar hiatus, with and important exception: bars serving craft beer are acceptable. It's a mixed blessing that such bars are hard to come by down here in rural Mie. But hopefully with some savings recouped from taking it easy on the regular stuff, I can travel and try out some good stuff.

More to come, hopefully this weekend, as I aim for my first trip out of Mie since April.