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.

Craft Beer Live Namba 2014

Craft Beer Live in Namba gets something of a bad rap among local beer geeks and is definitely seen by them as something of a second-tier festival. This is due to their interesting concept on focusing exclusively on Kansai area breweries.   Meaning that while you might find beers you normally can't many may not be so creative or delicious.                                          

Craft Beer Live goes to great lengths to bring together pretty much all the breweries operating in Kansai from nationally famous places like Minoh to breweries in tiny agricultural parks that tend to never leave their rural setting like Ajiwai no Sato - Tango Beer. So for me it's a great place to try breweries without having to go out into the sticks, very useful as I don't have a car and even if I did drinking and driving isn't a good idea.

Ajiwai no Sato - Tango Beers

The big drawback of this concept is many of the beers available aren't that good or interesting. Plenty of the breweries put out the typical Japanese craft beer triumvirate: Alt, Kolsch, Pilsener. This is slowly changing though, with mixed results.

One of my complaints at the fest, was that I wanted to see more special one-off beers made for it, I was kind of gripping about it while drinking the event beer: CB Ale/Craft Beer Live Ale from Chitei Ryoko.                                                                                                                                                                                A 5% English pale ale it poured a cloudy copper gold with a thin filmy off-white head. It had a pleasing mild biscuity malty aroma. Medium bodied with a very soft & smooth mouthfeel. The taste has a surprisingly bitter finish on that solid malt base. Average to good.                                                                                                                     Craft Beer Live has had a special beer made for the event during the last 2 years which I applaud, last year was a collaboration between Akashi & Dotombori Beer called Beer Hero - YPL a pale lager. 

Near the end of the festival I finally noticed that Minoh had trotted out more than their core range by putting together Yuzu Pale Ale one-off for the event. That certainly put a stop to my complaining! 

5.5% a cloudy copperish-gold with a thick foamy head. The aroma is very fruity hops, with a good dose of Yuzu. Med-light bodied with a zesty mouthfeel. Earthy piney fruit aroma, the taste is fruity hops with a mild dash of Yuzu. Good stuff.

So while it might not be the best festival in the Kansai calendar, it's well run and has a specific goal - to highlight local breweries. That's a goal I can support and hopefully we'll continue to see improvement from many of the smaller rural breweries.

Overall, if you happen to be in Osaka when Craft Beer Live is happening in May it's worth popping in to get an overview of what's going on among local breweries. While it may not be winning that much praise among beer geeks it's incredibly popular among locals with tons of people showing up to enjoy the food, beer & entertainment. 

Now let's take a look at some beer!

Blumen Kugel a farm brewery out in Shiga had only one beer on tap: a pilsner. 5.5% a cloudy gold pour with a half centimeter  foamy head. A really nice clean crackery malt aroma. Light bodied but with a fairly thin somewhat watery mouthfeel. The taste is malts all the way crackery mostly with a mild bitter finish. Quite tasty but not terribly complex. It needs more body. I'd like to try more of their beers.

Ajiwai no Sato / Tango Beer's Rye Lager, pours a deep gold with a solid spicy & cracker/biscuit aroma. A nice full bodied beer, with a tasty cracker pils malt body with a dash of spicy rye. Pretty good. Not an adventurous brewery but solid. 

Harvest Hill Weizen

Harvest Hill

 Harvest no Oka / Harvest Hill's summer seasonal weizen. 5% a solid cloudy gold pour with a decent filmy head with a big clove spicy weizen aroma. Med-thin bodied but smooth making it dead-easy to gulp down. The taste is tangy fruitiness, spicy cloves and wheat. Pretty damn good. Made once a year a spring/summer seasonal.

I'd been wanting to try Nagisa's seasonal Golden Ale and finally tracked it down at Craft Beer Live. A cloudy deep gold pour with a thin filmy head that lingers. A nice fruity aroma that has a good dose of crackery malts shining through. It's fairly smooth, light bodied with a round carbonation. It has a well balanced flavor: cracker malts & fruity ester/hop notes. Good stuff.

Ajiwai no Sato/Tango Beer's Smoke Beer. Shared by my friend Joshua.  A ruby brown pour with a nice smokey aroma. The flavor is pretty decent with a good smokey flavor, some fruitiness & caramel. Not bad.

 Soni Kohgen the only brewery I know of in Nara made Sentokun no Happoshu a  blueberry beer. 5% an earthy cloudy purple pour with a somewhat pink head. The aroma’s pretty good - fruity blueberry & a vinous. The taste is fruity, pretty good solid blueberry - a decent fruit beer. Not bad.

entertainment

winding down

Tuesday Tasting: Tainai Kogen Beer

Continuing my quest to try as many Japanese breweries, this week I'll be looking at Tainai Kogen Beer. I ordered a sampler 3 pack of their beers via Rakuten. They're a german style brewery located in the mountains of Niigata near the Tainai Ski area. Traditionally, they made 3 styles of beer: a Pilsner, a Weizen and an Alt but they've recently added a 4th style, a Rauch.

I chose to order the Rauch, Alt and Weizen.

One thing I like about this brewery are their clean modern labels. Their core range is a classy black with brass colored katakana type and scenes from their mountain home. The Rauch has a big bold but clean label. Looks good!

I started off with the newest beer in their line up, the Rauch.

Rauch

5.5% It was a bit of a gusher when opened and had a HUGE head of beige-orange tinged foam. The head was very long lasting with decent lacing, nice. 

The color's a clear dark amber brown with ruby highlights - a truly beautiful looking beer. The nose is sweet, tangy & smokey though milder than Schlenkerla or Fujizakura's Rauch.

The beer's medium bodied with a silky mouthfeel. The taste is surprisingly earthy, malts then a hit of that smokey flavor. An interesting take on a rauch, more subtle than in your face but well done - I like it. 

I then moved onto their Alt which I chose to order over their Pilsner. Both are styles that I'm not terribly interested in but I find altbiers slightly more interesting.

Alt

5% It pours a dark reddish brown that is similar to the Rauch but the head while beige/brown & fizzy vanished quickly leaving no lacing behind unlike the thick head the Rauch gave, still a nice looking beer though. 

The aroma is toffee, caramel, a hint of anise and some grainy maltiness. It is medium bodied with a cola like somewhat heavy and rough carbonation giving it a fairly aggressive mouthfeel. 

The taste is again surprisingly cola like, some fudge, caramel, a bit of grains and a truly dry sharp finish. This beer isn't that smooth or balanced it's kind of an in-your-face altbier if that makes any sense. 

Last up is one style I usually enjoy, their hefeweizen. What I look for in a weizen is a good dose of cloves, a cloudy straw gold color, thick head of white foam and possibly some fruity banana or bubblegum notes with a soft body. Let's how it measures up.

Weizen

Served in a weizen glass as it should be! Tainan Kogen’s Weizen pours a slightly deeper gold than I am used to in a weizen but has an impressive thick fluffy head of foam that gives it good lacing and decent staying power. The aroma is an enticing fruity clove scent with bubblegum notes - oishisou! 

Medium to light bodied the mouthfeel is fairly smooth with a spritzy carbonation. The taste is a bit more average, cloves, spices, some fruity esters but also a bit of a watery quality taste-wise. A pretty good weizen. 

My favorite of the three was the Rauch, then the Weizen, then the Alt. Looks like these guys are a pretty decent little brewery.