Nichinan Beer

Nichinan Beer in Nichinan City, Miyazaki is a microbrewery run entirely by Akifumi Hashimoto on his own, and his background is pretty interesting too.

He’s actually the seventh-generation president of Sakuramine Sake Brewery, a shochu distillery founded in 1877, in Meiji 10. He studied engineering and originally worked in auto parts, but entered the world of alcohol when his father took over the long-established shochu brewery, which had no successor.

Exactly. After honing his craft for 10 years making shochu, he was shocked when he saw beer being brewed in a small setup at a Ginza bar. And since he came from an engineering background, he ended up building most of the boiling saccharification kettle and fermentation tanks himself.

The beer names are great too. "Koigoura IPA," named after a surf spot in Nichinan, is a solid 7% IPA made with five kinds of hops, and "Umegahama HOP BURST" is a 6.5% aroma bomb, just like the name says, packed with hops.

They also make a saison called "Sakamoto Tanada Ale," which uses Hinohikari rice grown in Sakamoto Terraced Rice Fields, selected as one of Japan's 100 Best Terraced Rice Fields, as a secondary ingredient. The fruity character of the saison yeast is layered with the gentle sweetness of rice, so it pairs well with tempura and other Japanese dishes.

"Because we're small, we can keep taking on new challenges," Hashimoto says, and he keeps releasing new beers one after another, like "Pane Yuzu Ale" made with yuzu and a "Belgian White" with orange marmalade. A beer made by the seventh-generation head of a shochu brewery is definitely worth drinking.