Bluewood Brewery

Bluewood Brewery is in Aridagawa Town, and it's a completely different type from Nomcraft. The representative, Akira Kojima, is the fourth-generation owner of a local liquor store called Aokiya Sake Shop. If you translate "Aoki" into English, it's "Blue Wood" - and there's actually an Aoki tree standing next to the shop, which is where the brewery name comes from.

Wanting an original product of his own to stand up to the major breweries, he trained for a year and a half at Kibidote Shita Beer Brewery in Okayama and opened in 2017. The concept is refreshingly straightforward: "Turn all of Wakayama's delicious ingredients into beer."

Arida Mikan Ale uses local Arida mandarin juice, leaving the sweetness intact and bringing the mikan flavor to the forefront. Binchotan Stout uses Kishu binchotan charcoal - the kind sometimes called "the world's most expensive charcoal" - in food-grade form, creating a stout where the roasted malt's aroma is layered with charcoal nuances. It has a strong body and mellow bitterness, and you can enjoy how its expression changes as the temperature changes.

Arida Sansho Ale is amazing too. Aridagawa Town accounts for 70 percent of domestic grape sansho production, and they grind the highest-quality sansho, known as the "green diamond," in a mortar and use it in both the boil and fermentation stages. The aroma of the sansho rises from the back of your throat and glides up into your nose, and it's perfect with rich, oily dishes.

And there's also Ume Barley, a barley wine. They use Kishu Nanko plums, brew it with more than twice the usual amount of malt and nearly three times the hops, then age it long-term. At 9% ABV, it tastes mellow, like plum wine made with brandy. The mango used in Mango Hazy is also grown by students at Arida Chuo High School in the area. Even unripe green mandarins thinned out during fruit thinning are turned into sour beer. They're turning into beer even the ingredients that would normally be thrown away.

To top it off, Kojima hand-draws the label illustrations for all the beers himself. The "Bluewood-kun" tree character appears on every product. Because each brew is an ultra-small batch of about 200 liters, they can make small adjustments every time. The brewing space next to the liquor store has a glass window, so you can drink at the counter while looking at the tanks.