Choshi Beer

Choshi Beer Fujibee Brewery, this place has a lot to talk about. The president, Kaede Sakuma, is a female entrepreneur from Choshi. After 12 years in sales at a foreign-owned company, she returned to her hometown and started this brewery to energize Choshi with craft beer.

Choshi's population was around 90,000 in the 1960s, but it has fallen to the 50,000 range. Sakuma felt a strong sense of crisis about that, won the Entrepreneur Excellence Award at the 2016 CHIBA Business Contest, and founded the company in 2018. At first, she started with a small 300-liter setup at the Inubosaki Brewery.

Then in 2023, she opened the Fujibee Brewery, and this is the amazing part: it's on the site of her family shop, Fujibee, which had been operating for more than 200 years. By inheriting that noren, she introduced 1,000-liter equipment and increased production capacity more than fivefold.

The beers are top-tier too. Inubosaki Black IPA won gold at the World Beer Awards 2022, and Inubosaki White won bronze at the International Beer Cup 2021. More recently, All for One -Build up IPA- took silver at the Japan Great Beer Awards 2026.

Choshi Ale is an amber ale made with the concept of being a beer that goes well with fish, fitting for a fishing town. There's also Narita Airport Ale, which won bronze at IBC 2025. It uses ingredients from Chiba Prefecture and is themed around "the first drink upon arrival." They've also expanded overseas to Singapore and Taiwan.

That really fits with their goal of becoming a sustainable brewery. They're using local ingredients, protecting the community and the sea, and taking on the world at the same time. I really think Sakuma's drive is incredible.