MARCA

MARCA in Kitahorie has a brewer with a background that's pretty unusual even in the craft beer world. Owner-brewer Mizuki Kamiya used to be a car designer for Toyota and Daihatsu.

She graduated from Musashino Art University and spent about 13 years working on exterior and interior design at Toyota and Daihatsu combined. After getting married, she moved to Osaka, and the turning point came when she fell in love with the German beer Erdinger, a souvenir from her husband's overseas business trips. She thought, "I want to make something with my own hands, from choosing the ingredients to selling the finished product," and started learning brewing from scratch.

Over about a year, she visited all kinds of breweries, and even made an unannounced visit to a brewery in Ise to secure a training opportunity. She obtained her sake brewing license in April 2015 and started brewing the very next month.

Absolutely. She took inspiration from McLaren's factory when designing the brewery and pursues a "beautiful production environment" with attention paid down to every last screw. The shop is also a stylish space with full glass walls and a white-and-stainless-silver color scheme. Her philosophy is, "Beautiful things are born from beautiful production environments."

The most interesting one is "MAITAKE BRUT IPA." She developed it after noticing that enzymes from maitake mushrooms could be used in the brewing process, and Kamiya says it's the beer she truly wanted to make. They also have a standard pale ale, but instead of fixing the recipe, they fine-tune it with each brew to pursue the best possible taste every time.

By the way, the name "MARCA" comes from the "◯ka" mark used at her family's mandarin orange farm, with the "ka" in Kamiya encircled. It also means "target" in Italian and "brand" in Spanish. Today, as a brewing company, they operate at two locations: Beer stand MARCA in Kitahorie and TUGBOAT TAISHO in Taisho.