Shizuoka Brewing

Shizuoka Brewing's Kosuke Fukuyama is someone whose story really gets to me. While he was a student, he was shocked by a pint of Rising Sun Pale Ale he drank at a beer bar in Shizuoka, and that was what led him into the world of beer.

He joined Baird Brewing, spent a year working in the taproom, and was trained there by his mentor, Shohei Taguchi, who kept telling him, "You're shallow." Taguchi's teaching was summed up in the words, "What matters is what lies beyond that glass. What do the people drinking it think?"

But Taguchi passed away suddenly in 2015 at the age of 35. Fukuyama then trained for four years at Aoi Brewing and was entrusted with the role of head brewer. He went independent in 2019. As a freelance brewer, while handling recipe development and production for multiple breweries in the prefecture, he took on more than 10 million yen in debt and launched Shizuoka Brewing at the age of 33 in 2020.

This is the interesting part: they're focused on lagers. They take on the challenge using only their own lager yeast. Their flagship, Shizuoka Classic, is a 5.5% Dortmund-style beer with richness and satisfying body. Black Lager is a Schwarzbier, a dark beer you can drink smoothly and easily.

That's exactly the point. They're going after a lager that is different from the clean, crisp lagers of the major breweries, a lager that only craft beer can deliver. They also excel at working local ingredients into their beers: Yuzu Pils is a fruit lager, Hojicha Amber is an amber ale with the aroma of roasted green tea, and they even make something called Chamomile Lager.

The brewery is inside Sunpu no Koubou Takumishuku, a traditional crafts experience facility in Maruko, Shizuoka City. It's along the Abe River, and a craft beer brewery stands on the same grounds as workshops for indigo dyeing and bamboo crafts.