Fuji Premium Brewing

Fuji Premium Brewing. It was founded as a new company in January 2025, but its brewing history actually goes back to 1997. It started at the forest beer brewery of "Gotemba Kogen Beer," then became DHC Beer, and now that legacy has been carried over to the current FPB.

Exactly, and the brewing team is almost unchanged. Brewing head Yuka Ariga has been a leading talent since the DHC era, and her motto is, "I want to make beer that many people love and never get tired of drinking." Female brewery heads are still rare, so I want people to take notice.

The brewing water is amazing too: they use 100% groundwater naturally filtered through lava layers over several decades to 100 years from melted snow on Mt. Fuji. It's weakly alkaline soft water with no harshness. Beer journalist Hiroyuki Fujiwara described it as "clean beer," and that has become this brewery's signature.

"Malt and Hop Concerto" is incredible. It's a pale ale made with four kinds of malt and seven kinds of hops: Equinox, Strata, Cascade, Citra, Mosaic, Nelson Sauvin, and Nectaron. The tropical aroma of Southern Hemisphere hops blends with white-wine-like aromatics.

"STARDUST LAGER" is unique too, a Brut IPL style brewed with New Zealand Nelson Sauvin hops. It has an elegant white-grape-like aroma, and it also cuts sugar by 70% compared with regular lager. The key is that the yeast's fermentation power was strengthened to achieve this, so the flavor isn't sacrificed.

In 2023, Lager, Golden Meister, and Session IPA all won Grand Prix awards simultaneously at the Japan Food Selection. It was the first triple Grand Prix achievement in beer history. The Gotemba brewery also has a tasting bar, so you can drink while looking out at Mt. Fuji.