AJB - Anglo Japanese Brewing Company in Nozawa Onsen

The Anglo Japanese Brewing Company is an artisan brewery based in Nozawa Onsen  located in the mountains of Nagano Prefecture, Japan. Nozawa Onsen is a town of about 5000 souls that's been famous in the region for their thermal springs since the Edo period and has recently become a growing ski resort as well.

The Anglo Japanese Brewing Co. seems to be named after a British/Canadian/Japanese joint venture established in the early 20th century where Canadian George Conrad Reifel was a brewmaster:

During prohibition, Henry and George C. traveled to Japan to assist in the establishment of the Anglo Japanese Brewing Co., a joint venture of Japanese, British, and Canadian. 

They're one of the newest breweries in Japan having started production in January 2014 after a year building their brewery operation and a few months later they've begun bottling in limited quantities. They're struggling to meet local demand and so for now are only planning on selling locally in Nozawa Onsen.

Luckily for me, they hooked me up with some samples of their IPA(7%) and Scotch Ale(8%). 


But before we go into the beers let's learn a bit more about the brewery from the owner & head brewer: Tomas Livesey. 


Tell me about yourself, your background as a brewer and why you chose to set up a brewery in Nozawa Onsen.

I grew up on the Derbyshire/Staffordshire border, right in the heart of English brewing heritage, just down the road from Burton upon Trent. I lived there and London before moving to Nozawa Onsen 2 years ago.

We (myself and my wife Emiko) went traveling around the world for six months and a while after we got back to the UK we decided it would be a good time to move to Japan. I'd visited Nozawa onsen around five years ago (and every three to six months thereafter), and fell in love with the place, so when we decided to move it was a no brainer to head there. So really that came before the brewery. We just lucked out and it also happened to be an awesome place to make beer. The water is fantastic and we have been very warmly welcomed/supported by the community.

I started brewing when I was a kid. One of my mates "found" some home brew equipment, so we gave it a go. I don't remember how it turned out, I can't even remember tasting it. It should have been good in theory as my pal was a science buff, and he got pointers off his dad who was a chemist and into real ale. My friend was a bit older than me, but I could of only been 13 or 14. We also used to go scrumping and making cider, I remember that being good.

It wasn't till I got to University when I was about 18 that I started getting really geeky with brewing. It was around then that I started taking little pilgrimages to breweries I was interested in, and traveling abroad purely for the beer, but even before then, growing up with a good selection of local ale made me consider what I was drinking.

I studied right through till I finished my MA in 2008. So It wasn't until then that I started working in breweries. I also started doing daft stuff with home brewing like malting my own barley and really pushing the limits with some of the brews. Most notably and recently I helped out at Buxton brewery. They were making some great beers when I was there and I learn't a lot from James Kemp.

What is your production capacity at the moment and what are you goals for the brewery?

The current brew house is a small 3 BBL or thereabouts. The idea with it is really more of a pilot kit for the tap room, but if we were brewing every day it would give a pretty good capacity. We will likely build a slightly larger brewery in the near future, but we have no ambition to have a huge production brewery. We are really only interested in making exceptional beer, and our only ambition is to keep making good beer without constraint. We've been fortunate enough to get ourselves in a position where we don't answer to anyone else and can make the beers we want to make without having to compromise.  

Take the scotch ale for example, this is made from the first runnings of the mash (We only get 150L per batch), we then give it a very long boil to slightly caramelise the wort, it's then given as long as it needs to condition before being bottle conditioned further. The bottle you have is from February and this has only just been released (barely), so it’s nearly three months old before it leaves us. If we were thinking too much about profit margins we simply couldn’t make a beer like this.  

It was funny the other day, we had a brewer in and he loved the IPA, when I told him the recipe and the amount of dry hops he was shocked, and said they could never use so many hops. It seems crazy to me, surely you want to make the best beer possible, why compromise on a few hops, any right minded consumer would surely pay the small increase in price gladly for a superior beer.

Where did the name for the brewery come from? Were you inspired by the defunct brewery from the early 20th century?

The name “Anglo Japanese Brewing Company” AJB co. actually came from my farther. We were in England and trying to decide on a name for the company. We couldn’t decide on anything, but my dad said, “It’s obvious, call it the Anglo Japanese Brewing Company”. We weren’t sold on it at first, but we were in a rush to get the company formed and get cracking on the licence, so we went with it. We carried out pretty extensive searches beforehand and couldn’t find anything at all relating to the name. It was only recently that a few documents came to light on the internet about the old company. They must have been really buried on the web until people actually started searching. It’s really only the company name, the labels will be a lot more focused on Nozawa onsen and the individual brews.

Alright, now that we know more about where these beers come from let's give them a try! First up the Libushi IPA named after Libushi - 里武士 which started out as:

Libushi is a collaborative project between Thomas Livesey and Emiko Sugiyama based in, but not limited to Japan. Libushi brings together chefs, professionals, and scholars to collaborate in creating something truly unique.

Libushi provides the opportunity to experience different cultures and traditions, preserve histories, and explore new ingredients. Libushi heighten awareness of regions in Japan and their produce through sharing of knowledge, expertise and education.

Libushi create an environment where imagination is unearthed through intuition, and the boundaries of cuisine dissolve allowing for unlimited possibilities. It is not the objective of Libushi to impose it’s concept upon its audience, but rather allow them to experience and collaborate with Libushi through the journeys and enjoy the outcomes.

But it seems to have morphed into their brewpub Libushi up in Nozawa Onsen. From their background working with top chefs I am betting the food must be damn good!

The Libushi IPA pours a very cloudy honey amber, the nose is nice & hoppy. The hop bouquet gave me mostly pine needles & citrus. I rarely get pine needles from beers but I like it, I wonder what hops they used?

A nice smooth medium body with a soft carbonation gives it a pleasant mouthfeel. The taste is pine needles, citrus, passionfruit & some mild resin. 






A good IPA that is already better than many Japanese craft breweries offerings, especially considering they're such a young brewery. It shows lots of potential though they need to work on the look of the beer, this bottle conditioned one was very cloudy and not so appetizing. Since this was part of their bottling test batches I am sure they'll iron this out soon - the photos of their beers I've seen on draft didn't seem to have that issue so much. A solid start.



AJB's Scotch Ale raised my opinion of the brewery further, while the IPA was good the Scotch Ale was great. A really nice example of the style.



It poured a lovely dark brown with a thick foamy beige head. It was better looking than the IPA, and gave a really nice first impression. The aroma was of a fruity fudge caramel but quite soft, mouthwatering. 

The body was medium to full bodied with a rich smooth creamy mouthfeel. The taste is rich dark malts, caramel, fudge and a dash of tobacco,  pretty darn good.

All in all, Anglo Japanese Brewing Co. is a welcome addition to the Japanese Craft Beer Scene and are off to a strong start. The main negative for me is they're so far away from Kansai! Oh well, it gives me an excuse to visit Nagano someday so it isn't all bad. 

It's been great learning more about the brewery and I wish them the best of luck.