Iwami Beer

Did you know that Yamaguchi-san from Iwami Beer is called "Shimane's Edison"?

His background is incredible. He studied mushrooms in graduate school at Shinshu University, then got a job at a miso manufacturer after graduating. After that, he took over his family's woodworking company in Hiroshima, but he couldn't give up the dream he'd had since his student days of brewing alcohol.

You can't get a new license to brew sake, but you can for craft beer. So in 2014, he and his wife Azusa entered a business contest in Gotsu City and won the grand prize with a plan called Aim for Oktoberfest! A whole town as a brewery.

And the "Iwami Method" he came up with is revolutionary. Normally beer brewing uses stainless steel tanks that cost hundreds of thousands of yen, but Yamaguchi said, "It's nonsense that refrigerators are square but tanks are round," and devised a brewing method using chest freezers and plastic bags. Since it only costs about 50,000 yen per unit, around 10% of breweries across Japan have adopted this Iwami Method.

The beer itself is super distinctive too. Session IPA 151 uses shikuwasa from Tsuwano and the peel of summer mandarin oranges, while Belgian White 307 is flavored with naturally grown barley from Sakurae Town, plus yuzu peel and sansho pepper. They've used more than 60 kinds of adjuncts so far, including watermelon and even shijimi clams.

And Hako Station Brewery is really interesting too. They renovated the entire station building of Hako Station, an unmanned station on the JR San'in Main Line, and turned it into a brewery. There's a taproom attached, so you can drink beer fresh from the source. They even run events like a Beer & Sake Train, using trains and beer to energize the local area.