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!

Yamaoka Saketen - Kyoto (near Kitano Tenmangu)

 If you're a beer lover in Kansai then you must've heard about Yamaoka in Kyoto, if you haven't then I'm gonna tell you about it! This is one of those shops that could only exist in Japan. It's located in northern Kyoto near Kitano Tenmangu and from the outside looks like any other little mom & pop vegetable store. In actuality, this little shop has probably the best selection of bottled Japanese microbrews in Kansai! The first time I went there I wasn't sure I was in the right place but after going in past all the bins of fruits & veggies out front I found a few large fridges full of Japanese beers.

 To give you an idea of the selection available there you should know that Yamaoka is the shop that helped start up the Kyoto Craft Beer Festival so they have a great relationship with the breweries. When I went to a few festivals in Kansai and asked breweries “Where can I get your beer in Kyoto?” the answer was always “Yamaoka”.

So as is typical in Japan, almost all beers are kept refrigerated and they have all the regulars and many seasonals that change often. A nice thing is that they don't seem to favor any one style so you'll find whatever kind of beer you're looking for: IPAs, barleywines, weizens, stouts, porters, etc. Their prices are reasonable and the staff are friendly. They also organize events at their shop from time to time. 

 

 The only real negatives I can think of is the location. It isn't so easy to get there using public transportation. You have to take a bus from Kyoto Station or Hanku Omiya, get off at Senbon-Imadegawa, and walk North about 100m (Yamaoka's on the left). Otherwise, you have to grab a subway to Imadegawa and walk west quite far(or hop on a bus) to Senbondori Street.

Probably your best bet is to make a day of it, visit Kitano Tenmangu on the 25^th of the month when they have a huge flea market and then pop on over to Yamaoka to grab some beers. Or you can grab some beers to enjoy while wandering around the flea market!

All in all, it's a great little shop if you want to explore Japanese microbrews and one of the few places in Kyoto with a good selection of Japanese craft beer including local seasonals & rarities you probably can't find anywhere else in town.

 

Yamaoka Saketen

Senbon Imadegawa Agaru,
Botan-hoko-cho 555
Kyoto, Japan
telephone: 075-461-4772

homepage (Japanese only): http://yamaokasaketen.blog.shinobi.jp/

ratebeer: http://www.ratebeer.com/p/yamaoka-sake-shop-kyoto/10865/