Summer Brews...

I love drinking seasonal beers and to that end I ordered Brooklyn's Summer Ale (a blond ale) for about 400 yen via Rakuten. I then heard that Seijo Ishii was carrying Anchor's Summer Beer (a wheat ale) and picked up also for about 400 yen. 

Today, it was finally a beautiful summer day marking the end of the rainy season and giving me a chance to head to the beach and crack open a few summer beers!

I started off with the Brooklyn Summer Ale a 5% Blond Ale.

It poured a fairly clear deep orange gold with almost no head. The mouthfeel was a bit thin... the aroma was a nice zesty, fruity aroma while the flavor was sweet with a hint of grain, some citrus over malts & a slightly sour dry finish. For me it was a miss, it seemed like they tried to tone down a regular golden ale & just wound up with a weak flavored insipid beer. It was ok but kind of a let down for me. I was expecting more flavor based on the aroma. That being said, my wife really enjoyed it.

The next beer up was Anchor's Summer Beer which is a 4.6% American style Wheat Beer made with 50% wheat malt. As the label said it gives the beer an incredibly fluffy head of eggshell white foam over a very clear mellow gold body. A beautiful looking beer.

It had a nice fruity aroma that carried though it may have had a touch of grainy spiciness to it. A nice full mouthfeel & a mildly sweet fruity beer with a soft bitter finish to it. I liked it better than Brooklyn's Summer ale, I found it more flavorful & balanced. However, I was expecting something sweeter though. Out of the two brews, my wife preferred Brooklyn's while I liked Anchor's.

Gion Matsuri now has Craft Beer!

So last week I came across a craft beer map for the gion festival:

Which said that many local Kyoto breweries would be setting up stalls around town during the evenings of Gion Matsuri. When I heard this I thought "Great!" and then I thought "Why hasn't anyone thought of this before?".

In the past when I went to enjoy the festivals(the huge crowds not so much) I would visit Yamaya for a few beers but then I was stuck. There's tons of beer on sale but 99% of it is crappy macrobrew lager for prices ranging from 250-500 yen. Yamaoka the amazing beer shop up near Kitano Tenmangu has once again stepped up and organized the local brewers and some bars into making a map & hitting the streets to sell craft beer at 500 yen a glass. Thanks Yamaoka~!

Pick up your own copy at any of the stalls!

As I am a huge fan of fruit beers and their stall was right off Karasuma, I visited Ichijoji Brewery's stall first. They're my favorite brewery in Kyoto as they're always trying all kinds of recipes. Specializing in fruit beers means they're right up my alley!

Sansho Stout

I ordered a 6% sansho beer which was a stout made with the Japanese mountain herb sansho. It was great! The sansho gave the beer a wonderful aroma and balanced out the sweetness of the dark malts. It was very drinkable.

My wife wanted to try their 8% Honey Lemon beer, unfortunately this was a bit of a miss. It looked like a muddy brown and tasted like lemon juice. Not well balanced though it was still drinkable, this beer still needs some work. Oh well, when you experiment all the time you won't always succeed. They also had a weizen & ginger beer on tap.

Honey Lemon

We decided to wander through the backstreets over to Kizakura's stall. However, we chose the wrong street as the cops blocked everyone from passing and the crowd couldn't move for 5 minutes. I find their attempts at crowd control have just made it worse... They finally realized that they had to let people through and slowly we moved. It took like 20 minutes to go 10m! It was really frustrating and in all the year's I've gone to Gion Matsuri I've never seen anything like it.

Once we got past the bottleneck, we could move fairly quickly past tons of floats until we finally hit Kizakura's stall. Here they had a Stout, their Blue Nile (weizen) and a Kolsch on tap as well as many other beers/sakes available in bottles.

Kizakura's Stall

I tried their stout which was pretty average, I felt it was more like a schwarzbier. It looked great though.

Continuing down the streets we finally made it to Shijo where we turned left to head to Bungalow. I ordered a Daisen G Weizen (a decent weizen) and took advantage of their take out service (which alas is only during Gion).

I only hit 3 of the 7 craft spots on the map (each location has copies for you to pick up) as Haneda Shuzo weren't open yet-they will set up in Kyoto from the 15th. It was a fun night out with my wife enjoying the festival and trying out some craft beer!

Tuesday Tasting - Scotch Ale/Wee Heavy

So for today's Tuesday Tasting, I decided to take a look at Old Chub  a scotch ale from Oskar Blues and Big Eddy Wee Heavy from Leinenkugel. I had no idea these were the same style of beer until I saw this video:



The Beer Temple Episode 37: Wee Heavy from The Beer Temple on Vimeo.

A great way to learn more about the style. Both of these beers are typically available in Japan but it is amazing what some digging around online can turn up. Anyways, on to the beers!

Old Chub, 8% from Sugaya. It pours a very dark brown with a thin beige head with staying power. The aroma is one of rich creamy malts. Wonderful flavor, rich smooth mouthfeel with toffee and caramel notes with a smokey finish. Good stuff.

Tonight's second beer is the Big Eddy Wee Heavy Scotch Ale from Leinenkugel's Brewery. 9.5% pricier than Old Chub also from Sugaya. A darker, more opaque beer with a thinner, faster dissipating head of beige foam. The aroma is sweeter, with plum/fig notes, much maltier. Much sweeter flavor, fruity, some acidic sour bite, more of a boozy warming quality to it. Possibly a very very slight hint of smoke in the aftertaste. 


Old Chub is like the mellow guy chilling by the fireplace & Big Eddy is his younger brother hopping around looking to party. Very different takes on the same style. If you want something subtle but very nice go Old Chub, if you want something sweeter & more in your face go Big Eddy.

Neither of these beers are so easily obtainable in Japan but it is amazing what you can find online with a little digging around!