Fete Mishima Brewery

Fete Mishima Brewery is a microbrewery that opened in April 2023, but what really stands out is head brewer Misaki Takahashi. She is a female brewer who studied Brewing Science at Tokyo University of Agriculture, and the brewery is run by an all-female team.

Yeah, it's quite rare in Japan. It's run by Daisuke Tachikawa's family. His mother opened a restaurant called "aiai" in Numazu in 1972, and they had been serving Baird Beer there for more than 10 years. It took them three years of preparation before deciding to start brewing beer themselves, and they renovated a former metalworking factory about a three-minute walk from Mishima Station.

The second floor still has a Japanese-style room, so it's an interesting space where industrial roughness and the atmosphere of a traditional Japanese house coexist. On the first floor, there's a French bistro called Brasserie Allez, and the distinctive feature is that every beer is designed with food pairings in mind. They also have two sommeliers.

The beer itself is interesting too. Nishiura Lemonade Sour Ale is a gose-style sour made with lemons grown on Nishiura Coast in Numazu and salt from Heda in Numazu. They reportedly spent a lot of time developing it, and it's said to have a complex acidity like wine. Nishiura Soleil is a fruit ale that combines those lemons with Numazu tea, white koji, and Nelson Sauvin and Polaris hops.

Other beers include Mishima Sweet Potato ESB, which uses Mishima's specialty sweet potatoes and has hints of cinnamon and vanilla, and Shizuoka Hop Lager, which uses Shizuoka-grown Cascade hops for aromas of green tea and citrus. There's also Shinkai Noir, a coffee stout made with beans from Numazu Coffee Lab in Numazu. They've released more than 50 varieties in just two years, and the fact that every name is in French also ties in with the brewery's name, "fête," meaning celebration.

More recently, they've also started selling spring-limited Printaniéres, a strawberry Belgian wit, and bottles of Lilac Coffee Roaster Stout. It's a young brewery that opened just two years ago, but its unique strength comes from combining brewing techniques learned at Tokyo University of Agriculture with the food sensibility built over 50 years in the restaurant business.