Kochi Brewery

Kochi Brewery is a one-person brewery deep in the mountains of Bizen City, and its beer is truly one of a kind.

That's right. A brewer named Yuhei Seno does everything on his own. After studying brewing science in graduate school at Hiroshima University, he worked in the beer division at a sake brewery in Okayama for four years before going independent in 2018.

It seems a spontaneously fermented beer he drank in Belgium was the turning point. According to Seno, it was made in an environment like a stable, yet the taste was completely unlike any beer he'd had before. That shock led him to pursue 'brewing beer in harmony with nature.'

The brewery is in a renovated former miso factory in Yoshinaga Town, nestled in the forest along the Hattoji River. They collect wild yeast from the air and culture it themselves, then combine German organic, pesticide-free malt and hops with Okayama-grown wheat, finishing with bottle fermentation and bottle aging.

That's actually the point. Their flagship, 'Naked Ale,' is brewed without air conditioning, at the natural ambient temperature, so the fermentation period varies seasonally from three weeks to eight weeks. It's naturally carbonated, with only natural carbonation. Even the equipment is cleaned with hot water only, and no chemicals are used.

Exactly. You drink it like wine too - best at around 15°C, not too cold. Because it's unfiltered, the flavor is complex, and one distinctive feature of Kochi Brewery is a faint citrus peel aroma as you sip it.