Fujiyama Hunters Beer

Fujiyama Hunters Beer goes beyond the usual idea of craft beer. The representative, Michio Fukazawa, originally ran an LP gas business, but after his child was born he started farming, then got a hunting license for wildlife damage control and became a hunter, and ultimately ended up brewing beer.

Fukazawa grows rice and vegetables in Yuno, a mountainous area of Fujinomiya City, and he also hunts about 50 deer and wild boar a year. He realized, "This land has meat, fish, rice, and timber. The only thing missing is alcohol." And then a surfing buddy told him about a beer-brewing kit, which is what started it all.

What’s more, when the Liquor Tax Act was revised in 2018 and the regulations on adjunct ingredients were relaxed, that surfing buddy encouraged him by saying, "Waves like this don’t come often." That’s how he opened the brewery. It’s such a surfer-like decision.

Their flagship is a rice IPA called "NENGU." It uses Koshihikari rice and mochi rice grown pesticide-free in their own paddies, comes in at 6% ABV, and hits hard with citrusy hops. Then there’s "YOKI," a hinoki lager. This one is amazing too, because it uses hinoki chips from local thinning timber as an adjunct. When you drink it, you can really catch a faint hinoki aroma.

They also make things like "Mori no Tane," a saison brewed with kuromoji, an aromatic wood that they go into the mountains and gather themselves, and "YUNOMURA," made with wild Japanese honeybee honey and local yuzu. In five years they’ve made around 200 different kinds. The labels say "Since B.C. 11,000," and the concept is the spirit of Jomon-era self-sufficiency.

The brewer, Yurika Sano, is interesting too. She originally worked as an engineer at a beverage manufacturer in Tokyo, using her biochemistry background. She came to Shizuoka because she wanted to make beer where people could see the faces behind it. And more recently, they’ve been pushing seasonal releases too, like the cherry-blossom twist on the "Asagiri MOWMOW Stout," which combines salted cherry leaves, and "Do-Buche Kiwi," made with kiwi.