Mugikura Brewing

Mugikura Brewing in Shimosuwa has a brewer, Haruo Tamura, with an amazing background. He’s from Utsunomiya, and he used to work as a photographer in Tokyo, but because he loved sake so much, he switched careers and joined a sake brewery in Shimosuwa.

But that brewery went bankrupt. After that, he trained for two years at a craft beer company in Yamanashi, and in 2022 he launched his own brewery, Tamura Jozo.

He set up the brewery in the Hagikura area of Shimosuwa. It’s a place where soft water nourished by obsidian springs up, and he chose it because he knew the land from the days when he was making sake rice at the brewery.

And by combining that water with his sake knowledge, he created a rice beer called "Shiratsubaki." It uses Nagano-grown sake rice "Yamada Nishiki" and tengusa seaweed, and has a refreshing taste with a white, muscat-like aroma. This won the world’s top honor in the rice beer category at the World Beer Awards 2023.

In a competition with about 3,300 entries from 55 countries, their very first submission became the world champion. That unusual career path, from photographer to brewery owner to brewer, gave rise to a one-of-a-kind idea: using sake rice in beer.

They also make a saison called "Koihotaru," which is fruity with a nice balance of gentle acidity and light bitterness, as well as an IPA called "Higaminari" and a schwarzbier called "Atarayo." All of them have beautiful Japanese names, which really shows the visual sensibility of a former photographer.