Brewery Yanagawa

The owner of Brewery Yanagawa, Nobuhisa Kuroda, has an impressive background. He graduated from the University of Tokyo's Faculty of Agriculture and spent many years in a trading company and a chemical manufacturer working on pharmaceutical raw material development. After that, he took early retirement and returned to his hometown of Yanagawa.

And he didn't jump straight into beer either. First, he became the toji at Kikumihito Sake Brewery in nearby Miyama City. He built up deep fermentation expertise in the sake world before taking on craft beer.

Exactly. He also had experience tasting beers and wines from around the world during overseas postings, and with the wish that people would enjoy good beer in Yanagawa, he created Yanagawa Ale, Yanagawa's first craft beer.

They make four kinds of beer: pale ale, amber ale, wheat ale, and stout. What makes them special is that they blend seven different malts with different roast levels. The expertise in ingredient blending and fermentation he developed as a toji is packed into that blend.

Good catch. And the brewery's location is amazing too. It's renovated from a roughly 50-year-old house along Yanagawa's moat canals. You can enjoy beer while looking out over the atmospheric scenery of Yanagawa, the city of waterways.

They also set up a booth at the local Kikumihito Sake Brewery's open-house event, which feels very Yanagawa: a sake brewery and craft beer coexisting side by side. Yanagawa Ale, packed with this unusual career path of Todai, trading company, toji, and brewer, is the kind of beer you should drink on site while looking out at the canals.