Horsehead Labs

Horsehead Labs is really on a roll right now. At the 2025 International Beer Cup, all three beers it entered won medals.

Shidaizumi Sake Lees IPA won gold, Kanbara Hazy won silver, and Surugano Shizuku won silver. Even though only about 20 to 30 percent of entries are said to place at one of the world's five major beer competitions, they went three for three. And this is just three years after the brewery was founded.

Exactly. It's an IPA made with sake lees from Junmai Daiginjo at Shidaizumi, a Shizuoka sake brewery. The latest version uses lees from Kosetsu's dry tokubetsu junmai, and the series evolves by switching breweries. They're pushing the boundary between sake and craft beer. There's even a strawberry version.

The representative is Yusuke Takami. He originally worked for a general chemical manufacturer and was stationed in Dusseldorf, Germany, for four years starting in 2014. There he was struck by the diversity of beer, learned brewing through the local homebrewing community, then trained at Vector Brewing after returning to Japan, and founded HORSEHEAD LABS in 2022.

It's a 30-second walk from Shin-Kambara Station, inside a complex called Surugano Village. It's also great that you can see the brewery through the glass. And what's interesting is the two-brand lineup. The 'Bato' series is for beer geeks, with names like Nayuta 10^60 and Fushigi 10^64, based on Buddhist numerical units. The 'Jikuu Lab.' series is an easy entry point even for beginners, with beers like Magic Hour Saison and Blue Hour Session IPA.

Kanbara Ale is a 7% DDH IPA brewed with Citra, Simcoe, and Amarillo. It uses Maris Otter as the base malt, and the brewing water is spring water from Mount Goten. They also use some of their own malt and hops grown in Kanbara. Breweries that grow their own barley and hops locally are pretty rare.