Japanese Beers

Japanese brewers are not short of ideas, let alone daring. Dive into the foam with our selection of Japanese beers.

It all started in the Netherlands

Like gin, beer was introduced to Japan in the 1700s by Dutch merchants, most notably through a huge ‘beer palace’ in Nagasaki. And like gin, it immediately fascinated the locals (who already knew something about brewing from sake). We’ll spare you the details, but the market quickly consolidated… The four largest Japanese breweries today (Asahi, Kirin, Sapporo and Suntory) are also the oldest.

Fortunately, the Japan of hops has much more to offer than the excellent dry beers that have made these giants internationally famous. In the mid-90s, the Japanese legislature passed a law allowing the brewing of small quantities of beer. Since then, the number of microbreweries in the country has grown steadily. There are now more than 400! In Japan, their audacity is matched only by their purism. (And we’re not even talking about their fans).

Audacity and tax evasion

As you’ll see from our selection, the Japanese seem willing to brew anything they can get their hands on (matcha, red rice, citrus fruit…) and in all styles (IPA, IPL, stout…) with sometimes unexpected grains (soya, peas, rice, wheat…). In all likelihood, the centuries-old techniques used to brew sake are no strangers to success. The harsh reality is that a Belgian brewer can’t possibly make a successful beer with Japanese plums and seaweed salt.

It’s worth noting that Japanese beers also have a little cousin, happoshu, which is largely unknown in our country. These low-malt drinks were designed to get around the high taxes on traditional beers, which were so high because of their popularity. They have a rather bad press in their home country. For many Japanese, they are just tasteless substitutes that give you the proverbial hairache. However, the big brewers are currently working on premium versions of happoshu. Stay tuned.