Passific Brewing

Passific Brewing - technically, it’s spelled "Passific Brewing," and there’s a little naming trick behind it.

It’s intentional. "Pass" means mountain pass, and "Pacific" means the Pacific Ocean. The idea is a brewery that travels with beer, crossing seas and mountains. The logo also combines a mountain and a surfboard.

The founders are two high school classmates, Riku Oba and Toshiyuki Yamamoto. Oba is from Chigasaki, discovered craft beer at the local beer cafe Hoppman, and then spent seven years at Shiga Kogen Beer in Nagano. He did everything from farming to brewing.

After that, he spent a year and a half at CRAFTROCK BREWPUB in Nihonbashi, developing original recipes at a rate of about one per month. Meanwhile, Yamamoto is a building designer who personally renovated and designed a former factory on the north side of Chigasaki into a brewery. It opened in September 2021.

"Passific IPA" blends European and American hops in a distinctive way, and they also make beers like "Zwickle Pils" and "METAL WORK." With small-batch production of 500 liters per batch, they turn over 6 to 8 batches a month, and also brew 20 to 30 seasonal limited releases a year.

They also value connections with local regions, and have made limited beers using ingredients like yuzu from Kumamoto and lemongrass from Ninomiya Town. In the future, they even hope to build a brewery with an attached farm in a regional area and work from agriculture upward. That original experience from the Shiga Kogen days is probably at the root of it all.