Eiwa Hotaka Brewery

Hotaka Brewery. Here’s the surprise: its parent company is actually a marshmallow maker.

It’s Eiwa Co., Ltd., a marshmallow maker with the top market share in Japan. The owner loved beer, and when small-scale brewing was legalized in the 1994 Liquor Tax Law revision, they got moving with the idea of making beer with Azumino’s water. They were founded in 1997, so they have nearly 30 years of history now.

They use spring water that took many years to seep underground from the melted snow of the Northern Alps. And the brewmaster, Yoshiyoshi Kawasaki, is a veteran with more than 20 years in the craft, focusing on traditional German styles.

Their signature beers are Alt and Kölsch, the two major German ales. At the 2011 Japan Asia Beer Cup, they won both gold and silver in the German Ale category. They use 100% malt in all-malt brewing, and bottle the beer unfiltered with the yeast left in.

And there’s another great part: they use a hop variety called Shinshu Wase, grown in Azumino. This is a historic variety developed more than 100 years ago by Dai Nippon Beer, the predecessor of today’s Sapporo Beer. Cultivation stopped in the 1970s, but in 2016 it was revived by a local farm, Saito Farm.

Saito Farm took the lead in growing it, Azumino City supported the effort, and Hotaka Brewery agreed to buy it, so the project began through the collaboration of those three parties. Now all of their beers use hops grown in Azumino. In 2022, they also opened a brewpub called Azumino Brewery in front of Hotaka Station, where you can drink it fresh on the spot.