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!

Rokko Beer Diner & Garden - Kobe

Kobe is home to Rokko Beer located on Mt. Rokko but since that's a bit inconvenient they opened a taproom in the city. It's located right near City Hall and Sannomiya station in the basement of an office building. It's called, Rokko Beer Garden.

As it’s underground there are no windows making the ambiance not that great. On the plus side, they have a nice happy hour with a glass of beer being just 390 yen (100 yen off) & they also have a 1000 yen horoyoi set which includes a beer & 3 snacks.

The service was ok but the staff really didn’t seem to know anything about beer. The menu didn’t list the ABV and when I asked he had to go check with someone in the kitchen. The selection is decent for Japan with 8 Rokko beers & the rest  Belgian or German beers. They have a tiny non-smoking section of 2 tables, the rest of the seating (50-60 seats) is all smoking. A surprisingly big place, too bad it is mostly smoking... All in all a decent place if you are in the area but not worth a special trip, I like that they are open for lunch and find their happy hour pretty good too. I tried their fries which were better than Rokko Beer Diner’s!

Rokko Beer Diner is Rokko's newer bar in Kobe located on the 3rd floor of a building across the street from Motomachi station.

 This gives Rokko Beer Diner, a lot more light and a feeling of openess which creates a much nicer atmosphere.

On weekends they have a nice lunch special which will get you a free drink(including beer!) with your meal, their beers are 400 yen till 4pm and from 4-7pm they have a really nice happy hour with 5-600 yen(depending on the beer) getting you a glass & a small bowl of fried chicken and chips! Their normal prices are 480 yen for a glass, 6-700 yen for a US pint and 9-1000 yen for a large.

Magazine article about their great happy hour

The menu here was much better too with lots of information about the beers including ABV, company name, country, etc.

They have 20 taps but when I was there only 16 were in use. The staff here were much more knowledgeable, friendlier & the beer selection much wider than Rokko Garden as they had the 8 Rokko beers, some American Craft beers, German & Belgian  beers.

On top of that I heard they had Italian craft beers on tap before too! From everything I’ve heard and my own visit, this is the best places for good beer in Kobe at the moment. Go check it out.

http://www.rokko-beer.com/

Rokko Beer Garden

兵庫県神戸市中央区三宮町 1-1-1 新神戸ビルB1（114銀行のビル）

Rokko Beer Diner

神戸市中央区元町通1丁目14－13

St-Feuillien & Green Flash Friendship Brew Tasting

So last Friday I went down to Osaka for a beer tasting I organized to compare the two black saisons which were brewed by St-Feuillien in Belgium & Green Flash in California. I also added St-Feuillien's Saison to act as a kind of baseline of what a saison should be like.

Ajen & I lucked out with the weather being a perfect (though incredibly hot) summer day. Thankfully, Nakanoshima park had a nice breeze going on so we were quickly able to get down to business.

from left to right Saison, St-Feuillien Black Saison & Green Flash Friendship Brew

I started with the regular St-Feuillien Saison which had a sweet golden ale kind of aroma, a clear gold color & a nice farmhouse flavor profile of spice, a hint of hay in the finish and a bit of bitterness in the aftertaste. A really refreshing beer that perfectly matched the hot summer weather. It is a great straight saison and available in Japan at a decent price to boot.

I moved onto the St-Feuillien Black Saison 6.5%, the aroma was fairly mild but had a hint of chocolate. The color was a really dark brown and the flavor was of roast coffee, chocolate with a mildly bitter finish. I didn't get so many saison type characteristics from it, just perhaps a hint of farmhouse flavors at the start which were then lost in the malty sweet body. Very smooth & very nice.

The final beer of this tasting was Green Flash's take on the Black Saison, their Friendship Brew at 5.7%. I heard from Dominique Friart last week that they followed the same recipe but they must have done more than use different equipment! These beers were quite different, I think that the hopping schedule at the least must have been different...

Green Flash's version was a bit darker in color than St-Feuillien's but had tons more aroma! An interesting peppery/spicy aroma wafted out of my glass. The flavor was pretty bitter & much more hop forward with some pine, pepper & spice notes.

We felt that in the St-Feuillien version the malts were the star of the show whereas Green Flash highlighted the hops. We preferred St-Feuillien Black Saison that night though Ajen had liked Green Flash more the first time he'd done this kind of tasting. 

Since they each such different feels we decided to blend them to see what would happen...

...success! Suddenly, the mouthfeel became creamier, the malts melted a bit into the background while the peppery flavor and aroma became more subdued. It seemed better balanced as a blend. Very drinkable. Truly a friendship that works well together!

To recap, all the beers we tried were quite good and well made. St-Feuillien stayed true to their roots with the malts shinning and Green Flash lived up to their reputation with a hoppy beer. I look forward to seeing what they do with their next collaboration an IPA.