Tokyo Aleworks

Tokyo Aleworks has so many things worth talking about. First, founder Bob Stockwell is incredibly interesting. He’s from New York, but he studied in Japan at Tsukuba University because he practiced kendo.

Exactly. After that, he entered the whisky industry and trained at four distilleries in Scotland. He also worked in whisky marketing in Japan. But whisky takes 10 or 20 years to mature, right? He was drawn to beer because you can see results in a month, and that speed brought him into brewing.

Randy Karncross is also a New York-born whisky craftsman. The two of them launched the brewery in Itabashi in 2018. What’s interesting is their concept of "communal brewing": they take part in local festivals and organize stamp rallies with nearby shops, making the brewery part of the local community.

Bob brought the martial arts spirit of "shuhari" into brewing. Juniors Cream Ale, which stays true to the basics, is a gentle beer named as a tribute to his father. Alongside classics like Center Street IPA and Fragon Filler ESB, they also do bold experiments such as dry-teaing with tea leaves from Saga Prefecture and barrel-aged coffee collaborations.

On top of that, they’ve won awards at the Japan Great Beer Awards and the International Beer Cup, and were also selected for "Itabashi’s Best Picks 2025." More recently, they released the Hazy IPA "Fly Away Haze" and the locally collaborative "Oyama Haze" with Oyamacho. They also offer a brewing experience program where you can create your own beer from more than 100 recipes.