One Drop

Do you know Numazu's Nakamise Shopping Street? Hidden underground there is a brewery called ONE DROP.

Exactly, and on B1F there's a full 92-seat space. Behind the shop there's a 500L brewing system, plus seven fermentation tanks and four lagering tanks. Everything from brewing to filling is done right there. The beer comes straight from the tap fresh.

Here's the thing: the head brewer, Kei Watanabe, originally worked as a pharmaceutical researcher. He later studied brewing at Bingo Fukuyama Brewing College in Hiroshima and joined ONE DROP in 2022. It's quite a shift, from scientific research to beer making.

But I think that research background is exactly why the recipes are so logical. They always have eight core beers on tap: Pilsner, Kölsch, Weizen, IPL, IPA, Hazy IPA, Porter, and Red Ale, so the lineup is pretty broad.

It stands for India Pale Lager. It's a style that brings IPA-like hop character into a lager. ONE DROP's IPL hits you with firm hop bitterness, but it still has the crisp finish of a lager. They use water from the Kakita River spring system, fed by Mount Fuji's snowmelt, so the base water quality is excellent.

It's a balanced hop-and-malt beer, and they said it has a white-grape-like aroma. They vary the malt among UK, German, Australian, and Canadian sources, and the hops come from four countries as well: the US, Germany, New Zealand, and the UK. I like that they switch ingredients by origin to suit each of the eight beers.