Hakuba Brewing Company

Hakuba Brewing Company, the background of the brewer here, Daniel Coburn, is incredible. He’s an Englishman who studied science at Cambridge University.

When he was living in London, he got into homebrewing, then trained at an English brewery called Eden Brewery, where he learned how to blend British malt with American hops. Then from 1999 to 2001, he lived in Yamanashi, and every weekend he used to come to Hakuba to ski.

Exactly. After returning to London and spending nine more years there, he could no longer resist his longing for a life with mountains and snow, so he moved to Hakuba. When he started brewing in 2015, he said, "There wasn’t a beer in Japan at the time that I wanted to drink, so I decided to make my own."

He makes beer in a style that combines British yeast and malt with American hops, using Hakuba’s snowmelt water. Everything is unfiltered, and even bottling and capping are done by hand. Hakuba Pale Ale has a citrusy character with a firm bitterness, and Amber Ale brings out different expressions of the malt with Chinook hops.

What’s more, it’s right next to the Iwatake Ski Resort slopes, making it Japan’s only brewery restaurant with true ski-in, ski-out access. And every staff member is either a skier or a snowboarder.

In winter, you can have a freshly made IPA after a day on the slopes, and in summer, a pale ale while looking out at the Northern Alps. Daniel has both the precision of a scientist and the playfulness of a homebrewer, so he keeps challenging himself with newer styles like Hazy IPA and Source Daily IPA.