Brewmin’ Brewery

Did you know about Brewmin’ Brewery in Himi? It’s a brewery along the Minato River in a fishing town, and from the third floor you can see the Tateyama Mountain Range across Toyama Bay.

The owner, Yuki Yamamoto, is a fascinating guy. He’s originally from Himi, and he was an engineer at an IT company in Tokyo, but one craft beer he drank when he was 24 changed his life.

From there he jumped into the beer industry, worked his way up to manager at a brewpub in Tokyo, and then returned to his hometown of Himi to open this brewery. It’s run by his wife, Kozue, and his younger brother, Naoya, as a family.

That’s exactly Yamamoto’s vision: he wants to make beer part of what Himi is known for. A representative beer, "Minatogawa Ale," takes its name directly from the river in this fishing town, and they also make a very Himi-style beer called "Niboshi Black."

Himi is a production area for dried sardines, after all. They actively use local ingredients, and in the future they say they want to challenge themselves to make beer with 100% locally produced raw materials. Each brew is only about 150 liters, so one of the charms is that you can encounter a different beer every time you visit.

There’s a glass-walled brewing space inside the shop, so you can enjoy freshly made beer while watching the fermentation tanks. They also enter competitions, and they said they never miss visits to other breweries, so it’s a brewery that keeps evolving.