Nomcraft Brewing

Nomcraft Brewing is a brewery in Aridagawa Town, Wakayama, built by renovating a closed nursery school. What's more, the founding team is an unusual one: two Americans and a Japanese backpacker who traveled to 30 countries.

Ben Emrich, from Portland, and Adam Baran, from Chicago. They both came to Osaka in 2011 as English conversation teachers, and that is where they became homebrewing buddies in the same classroom. Then Ben met members of the Aridagawa Town community-building group, "Keep Aridagawa Weird," at Hankyu Department Store's "Portland Fair."

Exactly. The project was led by local furniture craftsman Shinsuke Morimoto, with the goal of making Aridagawa Town, which had been designated a potentially disappearing municipality, into a fun town like Portland. They were proposed the idea of using the closed nursery school as a brewery, and that is how Nomcraft got moving. The other Japanese member, Takumi Kaneko, had trained at breweries in Canada and Australia, and when he joined as an interpreter, the project got so interesting that he abandoned all his travel plans and moved to Aridagawa. He waited for the brewery to be launched while helping with mandarin orange harvesting and furniture making, which is another great part of the story.

Their flagship is OCTOPUS KING. At Japan Brewers Cup 2024, it took first place in the IPA category out of 140 entries. It combines juicy hop character with a crisp bitterness, and while it looks clear, the flavor is bright and expressive. Their standard NOMCRAFT IPA uses a blend of five hops for citrus and mango aromas, and NOM NOM GOLDEN is a light golden ale with notes of muscat and white grape.

They also make SANSHO NOMCRAFT IPA, brewed with local budo sansho pepper. Aridagawa Town produces 70 percent of Japan's budo sansho, and they fuse that tingling citrus character with hop aroma. The brewing water is Kukai Water, a spring water associated with the monk Kobo Daishi Kukai. Its minerals are neutral and it has no strong character, so Ben described it as being like a canvas on which beer can be painted freely. All of the label art is done by Seattle tattoo artist Tharence Chilmsferd, and the brewery even has a huge mural by him.

They've made more than 300 kinds of beer so far, and their stance is that limited releases almost never repeat the same recipe. It's a brewery where Portland craft spirit meets Wakayama ingredients, and the whole story is deliciously tied together by brewing, bringing energy to a potentially disappearing town.