Kirari Brewery

Kirari Brewery is in Yamaga, Kumamoto, and it's the only craft beer brewery in Yamaga. Female brewer Yukari Mori spent three years preparing the concept and then trained in brewing techniques in Oita Prefecture before opening in 2023.

She and her husband, Junji Mori, handle everything themselves, from brewing to label design. Their batches are tiny at about 100 liters, so there are lots of hands-on steps.

Exactly, and that lets them put care into every batch and create distinctive beers that make use of Yamaga ingredients. Take Gakuma Tea IPA, for example: it's an IPA made with local Gakuma tea from Yamaga, and it combines the tea aroma with hop bitterness in an interesting way.

They also make a salt lemon ale with Yamaga-grown lemons and Amakusa salt, a cassis fruit ale packed with cassis puree, a weizen with a subtle banana note, and even a coffee stout. They also use Yamaga rice in beer, so they really have a wide range of local ingredients to draw from.

What's more, three of their beers won silver and bronze awards at the Japan Great Beer Awards. For a tiny brewery brewing 100-liter batches to be recognized in a nationwide competition is pretty impressive.

Their shop is on the first floor of a building in Hojota, Yamaga City, with the brewery right next door, so it's a very compact setup. They also set up stalls at local sake brewery festivals, so they fit right into the town.