Narita Farm Brewery

There’s a place in Narita where a microbrewery sits inside a tourist farm. Narita Farm Brewery.

It’s inside Narita Farmland, a tourist farm with a total area of 25,000 square meters where you can pick strawberries and blueberries, and they opened a craft brewery there in October 2021. It was developed by Katsuhiro Ikemi, the company’s representative.

In addition to the three standard beers - pilsner, pale ale, and weizen - the star is the "Strawberry Ale." What’s amazing is that it uses plenty of juice from high-sugar strawberries harvested on their own farm.

The ingredients are malt, strawberry juice, hops, and Irish moss, and it’s 5% alcohol. It has a fresh strawberry aroma, and when you drink it you get both the strawberry’s tartness and the hops’ bitterness. It’s not overly sweet like a lot of fruit beers; it still works properly as a beer.

Exactly. I like the sense of proximity, with strawberries picked in the fields becoming beer at the brewery right next door. They use German and British malt, and American, New Zealand, and German hops depending on the brew, and the brewing water comes from Narita’s groundwater.

The farm grows blueberries and raspberries too, and they say on their official site that they’re also developing new products using them. Because it’s a farm, being able to increase the variety of fruits is a strength. They also have a BBQ area and a sweets workshop, so it’s a place where you can spend the whole day.