Beer Keyaki - Spring 2014

This is one of the most talked about and loved festivals in the Kanto region, organized by a local comunity group and set near Saitama Stadium in Shintoshin it features TONS of breweries from all over Japan with strong representation from Tochigi+Saitama and importers. It also has great prices making it beloved by beer geeks and cheap drunks - those two groups have a lot of overlap! ha ha

I'd been meaning to check out the festival for a long time but wasn't so keen on spending the time + money to get to Tokyo/Saitama from Kansai. Once I discovered Keyaki started on Thursday and lasted until Sunday I decided to take the plunge as my weekend is Thurs-Fri.

A grueling, but cheap at 2500yen, nightbus brought me to Shinjuku at around 6AM. With a day to kill prior to the fest kicking off in the afternoon I decided to hit up some places in Tokyo.

I started off with Asakusa Kanon Onsen to refresh myself.

onsen

Hit Senso-ji to eat my breakfast, read a book & soak in the atmosphere of my favorite temple in Tokyo.

 

Went to check out Solamachi shopping center at the base of the Sky Tree. I especially wanted to go to the 100% Organice Chocolate Cafe though the Tokyo Sky Banana shop was a fun surprise.

A short walk back to Asakusa, I popped into Asahi's brewpub. They had a decent IPA on tap, who knew?

 Then I hit a great photo-exhibition of abandonned pets in the Fukushima exclusion zone at a gallery in an old wooden was nice. I'd stopped by this gallery several times and while the cafe was always open, the gallery had been closed up until now.

  

A short subway ride later, I grabbed lunch at Mitsukoshi-Mae's IBREW which was nice and reasonably priced...

ginger pork lunch with Coedo's Session IPA

...then it was time to pop into Nomono in Akihabara Station to grab some take-away Japanese craft beer.

It was now time to head to the festival, first to meet up with a buddy at Craft Beer Baby in Saitama.

The Festival begins, Thursday was the night I overindulged but had fun with a few friends.

stadium

drinking buddies

getting silly

Blue Frog a new brewery

Two highlights for me were: Yorocco x Luc Bim Lafontaine's collaboration beers and Y Market Brewing's great stuff.

 

The next day I was massively hungover but slowly recovered, meeting up with a big part of the local beer community making for lots of sharing of beers.

Friday 11am Keyaki starts

tons of local moms 

first beer of the day

beers to go available!

1000 yen tasting set

Epic Sour Apple Saison

another 1000 yen tasting set

sharing is caring

Chewy plus Shelton Bros.

Alas, well maybe thankfully, I had to leave pretty early to catch a train back to Kyoto. All in all, Beer Keyaki lived up to the hype and is now one of my favorite festivals in Japan. It happens each Spring and Fall but I think I'll just go once a year tops. Good times.