Shimokawa Forest Brewery

Do you know Shimokawa Town? It’s a forestry town with a population of about 3,000, and there’s a brewery there run by a husband-and-wife team called Shimokawa Forest Brewery.

The person is Takashi Nakamura. He originally worked as a semiconductor engineer in Sapporo. During the COVID-19 pandemic, he started thinking about moving to the countryside, and in 2022 he relocated to Shimokawa Town as a community revitalization volunteer entrepreneur. His wife, Kikuми, joined him.

But beer clicked for him because it’s something you can drink casually, and it can also use a wide variety of agricultural products as ingredients. He learned brewing methods at Sumikawa Beer in Sapporo, opened a beer bar in September 2023, and obtained a brewing license in November. That’s impressive speed.

Here’s the thing: they use branches and leaves from local Todomatsu fir trees, which are thinned within the town, as a secondary ingredient. They have three standard beers: Pale Ale, Pilsner, and Weizen, all with a refreshing character that feels like walking through a Todomatsu forest.

Since they use branches and leaves from thinned forest materials, they’re making use of a byproduct of forest management. They use a small-batch brewing method called the Iwami style, and carefully brew in 150-liter batches. The shop has an attached brewery, and the beer bar called Beer Stand Ale pours from six taps.

It’s basically open Friday through Sunday in the evenings. Even the interior uses timber from Shimokawa Town, so the whole space feels wrapped in the forest. It’s a one-of-a-kind brewery that blends an engineer’s precision with the natural materials of a forestry town.