Hoshino Seisakusho (Barley)

If you heard the name Hoshino Seisakusho (Barley) for the first time, you probably wouldn't think it was a brewery, right? But this really is a brewery tucked inside part of a small neighborhood factory.

That's right. Koichiro Hoshino, the third-generation owner of Hoshino Seisakusho, a small Kawaguchi factory that makes molds and other parts, built a brewery on the factory grounds. He even renovated it together with his father.

He says, "I never intended to inherit the factory. Someday I wanted to run a business where I could make and sell something of my own." Before that, he worked in sales for a towel company and a fragrance company, and then discovered beer. He trained for a year and a half at Ginza's brewery 'Haban.'

It was drinking BrewDog's 'Punk IPA.' That one beer got him completely hooked on craft beer, and he realized it was a business where he could create added value with small batches. In 2018, he borrowed space in his father's factory and obtained a brewing license.

What's interesting is that they aren't just all about IPA. There's 'Friday's Cosmos,' a mango weizen, and 'WW Saison,' which is a dark saison made with dokudami. For their fresh hop beer, they harvest Cascade and Columbus from a field in Higashiyamato City and brew with them. They also care a lot about wheat malt, so many of their beers are easy to drink with restrained bitterness.

Hoshino-san is the kind of person who values whether the beer he makes comes close to what he originally wanted to create. He also shares posts on social media about music and books, not just beer, and he doesn't do templated promotion. He doesn't have a taproom and brews alone, so the volume is limited, but that also means each beer has a strong individual character.