Kyogoku Beer

Have you heard of Kyogoku Beer? It's a microbrewery making beer with spring water from Mt. Yotei, and this water is seriously incredible.

It's called Fukidashi Spring Water, and it's been selected both as one of the Environment Agency's Top 100 Famous Waters and as a Hokkaido Heritage site. Meltwater from Mt. Yotei slowly passes through geological layers formed over about 60,000 years of volcanic activity before bubbling up. They use that water as their brewing water.

The Omagari couple - Miki and Shigeo - opened it in September 2024. It's a tiny 500-liter brewing setup, and since 2022 they've also been growing their own hops in Kyogoku Town and even recruiting people for harvest experiences.

The regular lineup has three styles. The Pale Ale combines hop-driven citrus notes with malt caramel notes, giving it an orange marmalade-like flavor. They also make a Belgian White and a Session IPA, and they use different malts from the UK and Canada plus hops from several countries, including Japan.

Water makes up more than 90% of beer, after all. Soft water with a well-balanced mineral profile is less likely to produce off-flavors, and it lets hop and malt character come through clearly. Kyogoku's water is exactly that. They're also active at events in Sapporo, and they've even done POP-UPs like BEER TOPIA at Marui Imai and 'BEER meets OYATSU' in collaboration with a confectionery shop.

It was apparently a collaboration with polkadot, a confectionery shop in Makkari. A life running a hop field and brewery together as a couple at the foot of Mt. Yotei... it's kind of enviable, isn't it?