808 Brewery

808 Brewery is pronounced "Yaoya." Just like its name suggests, it's a brewery started by a greengrocer.

The representative, Hiroshi Kurihara, originally worked as a sales rep for a major housing manufacturer, but feeling like "something wasn't complete," he quit his job about 15 years ago. In 2008, he opened a vegetable direct-sales shop, and through Sun Foods Co., Ltd., he has been delivering fresh produce, grains, and rice to kindergartens, school lunches, and even nursing homes.

Exactly. And Oyama City actually ranks among the top in Japan for barley and adzuki-free millet production. As a greengrocer who had long worked with local agricultural products, Kurihara thought, "There is something only we can do." He raised funds through crowdfunding and launched the first craft beer brewery in the southern Tochigi area in 2021.

What's amazing here is that all three beers use agricultural products from Oyama. "Oyama Ale" uses off-grade unpolished rice from pesticide-free winter-flooded rice paddies, "808 IPA" uses small barley grains that are too tiny to sell, and "808 ESB" uses adzuki-free millet from Oyama.

That's right. It balances food loss reduction with craft beer brewing. Because they've spent years working with farmers as a greengrocer, they really understand what it means to waste something. Doesn't it make the best story that agricultural products that would have been discarded are reborn as beer?

You can buy it at Machi no Eki Shikisai-kan, a three-minute walk from the west exit of Oyama Station, and it's also available as a thank-you gift for hometown tax donations. Kurihara's dream is to "create Tochigi's beer highway." A beer made by someone who has cultivated the region from a greengrocer's perspective is something you can't help but want to support.