Farmentary

Farmentary, Kashihara City's first craft brewery, is a bit unusual. Its representative and head brewer, Sho Nishizaki, originally worked as a radiological technologist at a hospital.

That's where it connects. Nishizaki has always had a passion for agriculture, and after training at VOYAGER BREWING CO. in Wakayama, he went independent and launched this brewery. The name "FARMENTRY" is a coined word combining "Farm + Entry" and "Fermentery (a place of fermentation)," and it means "an entryway from agriculture."

Exactly. Nishizaki has continued growing hops at his own farm in Uda City, and the brewery's biggest feature is that it makes beer using wild yeast from Kashihara. Inside the brewery there's even a dedicated room called "Wild Room" for wild-yeast fermentation.

Normally breweries buy cultivated yeast and use that, but at Farmentary they pursue flavors that can only be made in Kashihara by using microbes that live in this land. Their farmhouse ale called "Woodpicker" is finished after being steeped with oak chips, giving it a subtle woody note amid the fruitiness.

That's a good comparison. "Mix Juice Saison" is a saison made with guava, peach, apple, and mandarin orange, at 3.5% alcohol. It goes down easy like juice. And the special house lager "Kin Spe" is a limited release distributed only around Kashihara City, so you have to go there to drink it, which is also pretty compelling.

Exactly. The classic route is to walk through Imai-cho, a preservation district for groups of important traditional buildings where streetscapes from the Edo period remain, and then have a beer at Farmentary. The taproom also has a bulldog mascot dog.