Tiels Brewing

Tiels Brewing in Mishima has a really interesting origin story, speaking as someone who used to work at a brewery. The founders, Katsuhiko Akita and Satoshi Kawaguchi, were regulars at a beer bar in Mishima called Marumaru, hit it off, and decided to start a brewery together.

And Akita found homebrewing in the United States, trained at Fish Market Tap Room in Numazu, and then spent a year and a half learning weekend brewing at Distant Shores Brewing in Tokyo. It was a seriously committed path.

Kawaguchi joined at the time of the opening in his 50s, and before that he had worked in apparel and construction. He is someone who switched gears in the second half of life to do what he loves. What the two of them noticed was the fact that there were no craft beer breweries in Mishima. Numazu and Izu had them, but Mishima was a blank spot.

The one I most want to talk about is the "Thinned Jutaro Hazy IPA." It uses thinned mandarin oranges from Oomatsu Farm in Numazu, meaning unripe fruit that would otherwise be discarded through thinning. Instead of sweetness, it has intense aroma and acidity, with 5.2% ABV and 25 IBU. It balances food-waste reduction with great beer flavor.

And that is not all. The spent grain from brewing is supplied to nearby farmers as compost and to poultry farms as feed. They run this circular system with a small 250-liter brewhouse. They also make the "Sweet Corn Lager" with nonstandard corn from Mishima, and their recent "Kinkan & Ougonkan Saison" uses pesticide-free kinkan and ogonkan from Numazu, at 5.5% ABV and 5 IBU.

It's a 3-minute walk from Mishima-Hirokoji Station, with 6 counter seats and 12 table seats. The brewing equipment is visible from the customer area, so you can drink while watching the beer being made. On weekends only, they also offer a service called "Beer Spike," where they plunge a heated iron ball into an imperial stout or a märzen to caramelize the sugars.