The Yokohama Winter Beer Bash

After an uneventful train ride to Yokohama, we met up with Ian's friend Patrick, who had been living in Japan for ten years and is now happily married. Patrick lives and works as a wellness coach in Yokohama, in addition to several other business interests.

Patrick took us to lunch at a favored soba restaurant, where I had a delicious bowl of hot soba with slices of duck breast. We proceeded along the bay (which is great...a wide park between the city and the water running for maybe a mile) and then through the city to the beer fest, which was held at a pier in the industrial section of the waterfront.

The fest itself was far smaller than what I expected coming from the US, but made sense given the younger beer culture in Japan. Japanese craft beer seems to be 15-20 years behind the US. The beer list in restaurants is (literally) a choice between "draft beer" and "bottled beer" and (according to Patrick) there is no concept of beer beyond watery mass market Asahi/Kirin/Suntory for most people. There were maybe a dozen breweries at the festival, and probably half of them were started by American expats. I will have to list the beers I tried in a separate post, but the short story is that they were all new to me, which always makes me happy.

During the fest, I met a really nice Québécois, named Luc, who had brewed in Montreal for 10 years and was now going to start a brewery north of Tokyo...I will try to meet up with him at CBC this year in Washington, DC. The win for the day though, was meeting Scott Brimmer, who opened Brimmer Brewing just outside of Tokyo about a year ago. Scott brewed at Sierra Nevada for nine years before moving to Japan. We talked for a while and, unsolicited, he offered an invitation to visit his brewery, which I am doing today (Monday). Details to follow!

Observation: inside the cultural bubble that is Craft beer in Japan, the brewers and other drivers in the industry are rock stars, and I think they get a lot of people trying to ride their coattails, or get their attention. For example, Patrick had gotten me in touch with Bryan Baird, owner of Baird Brewing in Numazu, before arriving. We had a good conversation about beer in the US vs. Japan at the festival, but I got a very polite brush-off when asking about visiting their brewery (which is how I met Luc, fortunately). Likewise, I was introduced to and tried to speak with Ry, who publishes Craft Beer Japan, and got a very rude response, as in "I'm not even going to stop walking to tell you to buzz off." (In fairness, he was in the middle of running a beer fest, but come on.)

Finally, we wrapped up the day by walking back to the commercial district, very quickly visiting the Cup Noodles Museum, and having dinner at my favorite conveyor sushi restaurant in all of Yokohama. It was very helpful to have a near-native speaker with us to order all manner of delicious plates. Below: three cuts of tuna from "shitty" to divine o-toro. Of course, the worst cut was far superior to anything I could hope to get back home in Nashville, with apologies to Mr. Choo and Samurai Sushi.

Tokyo, take 2

I know there is no "take 1" on here, because I have been delinquent, due to having an infant (now toddler) and opening a brewery. I would say that I haven't travelled much, which is true except for the trip we took to Tokyo last March (2012).

Now I am back to visit Ian before he moves back to the US this spring. I am here for one short week, which is the longest that I'm wiling to leave the brewery in other people's hands. (In fairness, I am pretty pleased that Fat Bottom is stable enough that I can walk away for a week and be confident that nothing will collapse.)

It is Sunday now, and we are getting ready to go to the Yokohama Winter Beer Bash...more on that later. I left Nashville early Wednesday morning and got to Ian's place in Tokyo just before dinner Thursday. The weather here has been fantastic for January...clear and temperatures in the 40s, maybe touching 50 at midday. I came here on a beer and noodle mission, and can proudly say that I ate nothing but ramen and onigiri until dinner last night, which was tonkatsu (fried pork cutlet).

On the beer front we have done well. At dinner we generally drink local macro brews (all that is available in most restaurants), but we went to the Baird's Brewery taproom in Meguro on Friday night to enjoy some local craft beer and the poetry of Robert Burns, since it was his birthday, read by a very drunk and friendly Scottish-Japanese guy.