Tokumanjiri Hinomoto Beer

There’s a brewery in Kotoura Town, Tottori, called Tokumanjiri Hinomoto Beer, and it’s pretty wild.

“Tokumanjiri” is the place name where the brewery is located. And here’s the twist: they brew inside an izakaya called Shubou Gin. It’s a microbrewery attached to a pub.

The brewer, Hiroki Bandai, has quite a story too. He used to work in machinery tools sales, then quit his job and traveled all around Japan with a partner in a camper van. After that, he trained as a brewer at a brewery in Fukuoka, and then moved to Kotoura Town.

Their standard beer, "Shiro," is a milk ale made with skim milk powder sourced from a dairy producer in Kotoura Town. This was the label that won bronze at the Japan Great Beer Awards 2026. What makes it even better is that the award went to a revived version of the original recipe.

It has a milky, soft mouthfeel. They also make "Tsumugu," an ale using mulberry leaves grown locally, and "Musou," a beer made with mirin lees in partnership with Umezu Shuzo, which people say may be the first of its kind in the world.

They work with local breweries and farmers to turn Kotoura Town ingredients into beer. Because it’s a small brewery, they can experiment batch by batch.