T.K. Brewing

TK Brewing in Kawasaki was started by a man named Ryoichi Takabayashi, who quit his salaried IT job at 50 to launch the brewery. It says he opened the direct-sales shop on his 52nd birthday.

It all started in 1998, when he was stationed in Toronto for work and began homebrewing. After returning to Japan, he kept sharpening his skills on his own while listening to the American homebrewing radio show "Jamil Show" as a podcast, and nurtured the dream for years.

And here’s the great part: he made a business plan and showed it to his wife, Eriko. She remembered the homebrew he drank in the Toronto days as "fruity, aromatic, and easy to drink," and trusted that flavor, so the two of them run the business side by side.

The beer is interesting too. "Dopeness IPA" is a West Coast-style beer with ABV 7.0% and IBU 72, packing a real punch. In the recent #440 batch, they used four kinds of hops and pushed the IBU up to 79. "Behind The Cloud" is a New England IPA, so it’s juicy.

Exactly. They number each batch sequentially and release a new beer every week. With a narrow 200-liter fermentation tank, each batch is about 600 bottles, so every release really feels one of a kind. In 2020, their porter and stout entry "Amesta" won silver in the Beer-1 Grand Prix.

They relocated and restarted in a new place, and now they’re open from Wednesday, which makes them easier to visit. They also do growler fills, so it’s a good idea to bring one along.