Sake Museum Jogura

Mugi, do you know Settaya in Nagaoka? It's called a brewing town, with rows of miso, soy sauce, and sake breweries, and there's a sake brewery called Yoshinogawa there, founded in 1548. They're making craft beer on the brewery grounds.

Exactly. It's under the Settaya Craft brand. And the building where the brewery is located is amazing too, because it was renovated from Joukura, a warehouse built in the Taisho era about 100 years ago. With its truss-beam ceiling, it's a nationally registered tangible cultural property.

What's more, the building is now a facility called Sake Museum Jogura, where you can taste beer at the SAKE bar and view the brewing equipment through glass.

Here's the clever part, and it's very much what you'd expect from a sake brewery. They use the brewing water Yoshinogawa has used for 470 years, called Tenkakanro-sen, and they also add rice koji as a secondary ingredient. There are a Pale Ale and a Weizen. The Pale Ale has a citrus aroma and a sharp bitterness, while the Weizen has a gentle acidity from the wheat and a fruity yeast aroma.

Yes, the rice koji gives it a clean, refreshing mouthfeel. Legally it's classified as happoshu, but the brewing method is the same as beer. Beer made with the same water as sake really is a unique experience you can only have here.