Bathe Yotsume Brewery

Bathe Yotsume Brewery is right near the Skytree in Oshiage, but what do you think the parent company is? A bathhouse. Have you heard of Koganeyu in Kinshicho?

Takuyō Shinpo and Tomoko Shinpo run four bathhouses in Tokyo. When they did a major renovation of Koganeyu in 2020, they put a beer bar and DJ booth inside. While serving beers from other breweries there, they gradually got the urge to make their own.

What's more, brewing began on November 26, which is "Good Bath Day." Their concept is "brewing the best moments after a soak," and every beer name is tied to baths or saunas.

"BATHE FOREST" is a weizen, and it's really something. They use vihta, the birch branches and leaves used in Finnish saunas, as an adjunct. It has a woody aroma like a walk in the forest. At 3.7% ABV, it's light, so it really goes down smoothly after a bath. "BATHE SHOWER" is a West Coast IPA at 7%, and "BATHE SUNRISE" is a pale ale at 5%.

The interior was designed by Yosuke Hayashi of 14sd (Fourteen Stones Design), the same studio as Koffee Mameya, and the branding was done by Hiroko Takahashi, a Tokyo University of the Arts professor whose work is also in the V&A. The place is glass-fronted, so you can see the brewing tanks from the street, records are spinning, and the beer is served in glasses that look like Indian science lab equipment.

It's about a 20-second walk from a bathhouse called Sakurayu. Along Yotsume Street, Koganeyu, Daikokuyu, and Sakurayu stand side by side, and the brewery sits at the center of that "bathhouse corridor." You can take a bath at a sento and then walk to the taproom. They also successfully ran a Makuake crowdfunding campaign and offered a plan that combined bath tickets with beer tastings.