Birrificio Hayama

Birrificio Hayama. Even the name sounds Italian, and birrificio means brewery. It’s a craft beer from Hayama with an Italian mindset.

It’s run by Buona Fenice Co., Ltd., whose representative, Taro Takada, also handles restaurant operations and food-service consulting. The brewery’s biggest feature is that a wine sommelier and a beer maker work together to design the beers with food pairing in mind.

Very unusual. They’ve designed a wide range of flavors so the beers can pair with all kinds of cuisine, from Italian and French to Japanese. The idea is not to make the beer the star like wine, but to make it enhance the food.

And all of them are bottle-conditioned, too. Because fermentation continues in the bottle, the flavor changes if you let them age after buying. You can enjoy how beer evolves over time, just like maturing wine in a cellar.

In Isshiki, Hayama, there’s also Il Rifugio Hayama, a fully reservation-only Italian restaurant. Chef Akira Watanabe runs it, and he even has affiliated restaurants in Sardinia, so he’s the real thing. It shares the same address as this brewery.

You can also buy it from the online shop, so trying it at home with your favorite dishes is a great option. I think this kind of craft beer, which you can enjoy in a wine-like way, is really interesting as an entry point.