Nikko Brewing

Nikko Brewing's parent company is the long-established souvenir shop Sanbonmatsu Chaya, founded in Meiji 4, 1871. It's a company with over 150 years of history that started making craft beer in 2018.

The third-generation owner, Yasufumi Tsurumaki, graduated from a university in Tokyo and returned to Oku-Nikko in 2003, but he felt a sense of危機 about the local attitude of continuing to sell products that weren't worth their price just because they relied on the Nikko brand. Then, in 2012, Nikko Beer went out of business and local beer disappeared from Nikko. So he decided to make it himself.

What's interesting is that chief brewer Takashi Hosoda came from an IT company and had zero brewing experience. Tsurumaki deliberately hired someone who was a complete novice. He wanted fresh ideas unconstrained by existing common sense. And his brewing advisor is Akira Kikuchi, who helped launch Echigo Beer, Japan's first craft beer.

Their flagship brand is the "THE NIKKO MONKEYS" series. The PALE ALE uses two American hop varieties, Citra and Simcoe, and has a bright, passion-fruit-like aroma. It won gold at the 2020 Japan Great Beer Awards. The PREMIUM LAGER won silver the same year.

They also have the "Nikko Belgian Beer" series, developed over about a year with officials from the Belgian Embassy. "Un" is a Belgian blonde with banana and pear aromas, while "Deux" is a Belgian white with coriander and orange peel spice. The concept is to express Nikko's history of blending Eastern and Western cultures through Belgian beer.

They brew with natural spring water from Oku-Nikko and cultivate their own yeast. They also make STRAWBERRY, which uses 150 kg of Tochigi-grown strawberries in 940 liters of beer, and a saison made with Nikko-grown Japanese pepper. The goal is also to make use of agricultural products that would otherwise fall outside standards and be discarded.