Kazo Beer

Have you heard of Kazo Beer? The representative, Hiroyuki Matsuzawa, got hooked on craft beer at the Keyaki Hiroba Beer Festival and then spent more than three years training around the country.

He traveled all over Japan, training at Minami-Aizu Mountain Brewing in Fukushima, Tochigi Micro Brewery in Tochigi, Ise Kadoya Beer in Mie, and RIOT BEER in Tokyo. Ise Kadoya is a prestigious brewery that regularly appears in competitions, so I think the experience he gained there was especially valuable.

Then in 2021, he set up his own brewery in a residential area of Kazo City. It's a small 200-liter-scale brewery, and outside there's a spacious garden with room for five tables, so the relaxed drinking atmosphere is great.

They have a Weizen called 'Kazo Sanftes Weizen,' plus 'PANORAMA SAISON,' 'FIRST IPA,' and 'Brown Porter.' What's interesting is that they use ski-related words in their beer names.

Probably because it's one of Matsuzawa's hobbies. It's fun when the brewer's personality shows up in the beer names. They also provide spent grain from brewing to nearby schools as fertilizer, so they're involved in local resource recycling too.

More recently, they had eight taps running at the spring beer festival, and they also seem to be guest participants at Nomendo's second anniversary celebration. It's nice to see the connections among breweries in Saitama.