Bingo Fukuyama Brewing College

There’s a brewery in Jinsekikogen Town, Hiroshima called Bingo Fukuyama Brewing College, and it’s not just any brewery. It’s an "Educational Brewery" set on a plateau at 500 meters above sea level, where you can learn how to make beer.

Exactly. You can even live in and train there, and they also offer small-scale brewing experiences. And the person running it, Shoji Obata, is amazing too. He originally opened an English pub called PANGAEA in Senzoku, Shinagawa, Tokyo in 2004, and he brewed beer himself there as well.

Obata is from Fukuyama, and he closed PANGAEA in 2014 and returned home. What’s more, he holds the "Master Beer Judge" qualification, which only about 10 people in Japan have, and he has represented Japan as an international beer judge for more than 12 years.

That’s right. They even won gold at the International Brewing Awards 2020. But Obata’s philosophy is interesting too: he calls his own beer "plain." He values traditional brewing that isn’t swayed by trends.

Their flagship is Old Days Best Bitter. It’s a classic English bitter made with British malt, at 4.5% ABV. IPA Bingo is an IPA brewed with Aurora and Summit hops, so the aroma really comes through. And for something unusual, there’s Hojicha Helles, where the roasted aroma of hojicha gently spreads after the malt sweetness.

And Fukuyama is famous as the "city of roses," and this brewery was the first in Japan to use rose yeast, which was researched at Fukuyama University, in beer. It had already been used in bread and wine, but Obata was the first to use it in beer.