Thursday 23 February 2017

Yo Ho Brewing - Yona Yona Ale 330ml can.



Name: Yona Yona Ale

Brewery: Yo Ho Brewing

Style: Pale Ale

Purchased at: Liquor store in a super market.

Price: ¥350

Taste: 9.5/10

Alcohol Level: 5.5%

Music: I was playing guitar while drinking this beer. I have a 7 string guitar, running through a bass amp with a Rat distortion. Just messing around with some heavy sounding riffs.


Snack: Beef Jerky, later that evening I ate pizza.

Website: http://yohobrewing.com/e/yonayona.html

Experience:

In the last review I reviewed an IPA made by the same company that made this beer. It was terrible and I'd prefer to never have it again. This beer, however, is one of the best beers I've had here in Japan. It's a Pale Ale, which I am already a fan of, but to me it doesn't have any of the bad tastes some Pale Ales can have, where they end up tasting like soap.

This beer was kind of citrusy, it has a great golden colour and looks perfect when poured into a glass. It goes down smooth and it is extremely refreshing. There's a bar at the station in Nagano that serves this beer in those glasses that look kinda like wine glasses, but for beer. I raised my glass and drank to those who were frantically trying to catch their trains. Little did they know, with all their rushing around from place to place, that the perfect beer in the perfect glass was located in the very place their journeys began! If you find yourself at Nagano station, tear up your ticket and head to the second floor, there's a bar there with a sausage place right across from it. You can drink this beer all night and eat sausages at the same time, sounds pretty good to me.

Yona Yona apparently means "Night after night" in Japanese. I guess they are implying you could drink this beer night after night without getting sick of it. I think because it doesn't have any super strong flavours in particular this could be true. I don't see what there would be to get sick of. It's just a clean, fresh tasting beer.

The only reason I didn't give this beer a 10/10 is because I'm waiting for the true king of beers to reveal itself to me. At the moment this beer is probably my favourite one in Japan. If you see it, bloody go for it, I don't see how you could possibly regret it.

Today is Friday, so I daresay I will be grabbing a few of these on the way home tonight.

YO HO Brewing - Aooni Blue Devil IPA 330ml Can.




Name: Aooni

Brewery: Yo Ho Brewing.

Style: IPA

Purchased at: 7/11

Price: ¥300

Taste: 3/10

Alcohol Level: 7%

Music: Ahab - Boats of the Glen Carrig
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-XmmznY45I


Snack: Beef Jerky

Website: http://yohobrewing.com/e/

Experience:

I purchased two beers to drink while I was playing guitar on a Friday night. They were both made by the same company, one an IPA and one was just a Pale Ale. Somehow, the same company managed to make one of the best, and one of the worst beers I have ever tasted.

This one was one of the worst. I could barely finish it. In fact I couldn't finish it while I was playing and was holding onto it up until I was leaving the music studio, at which point I skulled it just to get rid of it.

This tasted like dirty cauliflower water, that's my best way of describing it. I've tasted IPAs before, they aren't my favourite style, but I don't want to spit them out like this one. Maybe I picked one from a contaminated batch or something, I don't know, but it tasted terrible. Thankfully I had a beef jerky chaser to get rid of the flavour.

I realised I have another one in the fridge at home, so I'll suffer through it again to see if I was wrong the first time. If you are really into IPAs you could give it a try, but I would recommend trying another one of the beers this company offers.

Tuesday 14 February 2017

Zenkoji Roman Beer Rindou - 330ml can


Name: Zenkoji Roman Beer Rindou

Brewery: Reijin Shuzo Co.

Style: Stout

Purchased at: Liquor store in a super market.

Price: ¥250

Taste: 7/10

Alcohol Level: 5%

Music: Been listening to Alcest - Kodama a lot recently. I love all of Alcest's albums, my favourite song off this one is probably Eclosion. I am glad Neige brought the harsh vocals back on this album.


Snack: Beef Sausage (Good) and a ``Kebab``(Abysmal)

Website: http://www.reijin.com/info/


Experience:

Zenkoji is the name of a huge, famous temple in my town. It is about 1400 years old, but it's been burned down and rebuilt a bunch of times. If you spend any amount of time in Nagano you'll probably visit it at least once. They hold a lot of festivals and events here though out the year, and it's just a nice place to take a walk. For the few weeks that pokemon go was popular, it was a great place to do laps and catch pokemon, until they put up signs asking people not to play it near the temple.

Saturday night was the Zenkoji Lantern festival. Hundreds of lanterns decorated by people in the town lined the streets and the temple itself was lit up with a sound and light show. I really like these festivals where everyone in the town seems to come out, it's a great atmosphere. Since it was saturday night and Zenkoji's festival, I decided to have a ``Zenkoji`` beer.

I think they make this beer in a town called Suwa, which is and hour or two south of Nagano city. Looking at their website, it appears that they have made a number of beers themed on things in Nagano. It looks like the company focuses more on their sake than beer. The company appears to be quite old, but I'm sure that their beer would be a newer venture for them.

This beer was a stout, I think. It had a pretty strong toffee sort of flavour. Seems like it would be great drinking it in the warmth of  pub, unfortunately I was outside and didn't bring gloves. Drinking a Zenkoji beer in Zenkoji itself was a pretty cool experience though and my hand which was slowly succumbing to frostbite was able to keep the can cold. I've seen this beer for sale at the station, so a lot of people probably buy this beer right before they jump on the shinkansen. While drinking this beer I was eating some of the food being sold from stalls along the street. I had a sausage, which was really good, and a kebab which was terrible.

Kebabs in Australia are unreal, easily one of my favourite foods. I've tried to find kebabs here in Japan, and I've been disappointed every single time. For some reason every kebab vendor in Japan uses shredded cabbage instead of lettuce. They use mayonnaise instead of more traditional kebab sauces. And they are always tiny. Sometimes the meat in them is pretty good, so it's not all bad I guess, but they are nothing like back home and I can't imagine any kebab enthusiast ever being satisfied. Still, I'll continue searching this country for a decent kebab. If I ever find one, they will have an extremely loyal customer.

Anyway on this particular night a local restaurant that will remain nameless set up a food stall. They had fried chicken and kebab rolls. Great, I thought, beers and kebabs, what a great festival. Boy was I wrong. The kebab was ice cold and it had coleslaw in it with some meat. Had I had a few more beers and not been at a festival I would have thrown it to the ground and stomped it. Why even call it a kebab? It was a coleslaw wrap if anything. This is probably a similar feeling that Japanese people get when they travel abroad and encounter deep friend mayonnaise bombs advertised as ''sushi''. I get that different countries have different interpretations of classic dishes, but that doesn't make it any less disappointing.

Anyway, the beer was really good. If you drink a Zenkoji beer in Zenkoji temple, I'm sure it's gotta be good luck or something, so try it out. You'll find this beer at the station and pretty much any souvenir shop that sells food. My  photo was pretty crap, so look for the red can with a picture of the temple on it.

Tuesday 7 February 2017

OH! LA! HO Beer - Captain Crow Extra Pale Ale






Name: Captain Crow Extra Pale Ale

Brewery: OH! LA! HO Beer

Style: Pale Ale

Purchased at: Liquor store in a super market.

Price: ¥300

Taste: 7.5/10

Alcohol Level: 5%

Music: Ahab - Boats of the Glen Carrig
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-XmmznY45I


Snack: Beef Jerky. Special Setsubun sushi roll.

Website: http://www.tomi-kosya.com/ohlaho-beer/ohlaho-beer.html

Experience:

Today was a special day in Japan called Setsubun, we still had to go to work though. Setsubun is a special bean throwing day. In the evening I guess, someone in the family puts on a demon mask and runs around the house while the rest of the family throws beans at them. Someone I work with told said the demon is like all the bad thoughts and stuff you have, so throwing beans at the demon is a way to get rid of a lot of negativity you might be carrying around. If someone started throwing beans at me, I'd definitely leave, so it seems like a good idea. You might have to be careful if you have a kid with some heavy shit going on, those beans might knock you out.

On this particular day they make really long sushi rolls that are probably shared with the family. I got one for myself though and I did not share it. With the sushi rolls they have also been selling peanuts and beans in supermarkets for weeks leading up to this day, so I imagine a lot of people get into it pretty hard.

It also happened to be Friday night, so I decided to help myself to a few train beers. You can drink anywhere here in Japan. A lot of people from other countries, especially Australians, think this is really cool and almost instantly and constantly take advantage of this. Living here for a while I've come to realise that most Japanese people don't drink beers and stuff on the train after work, so I try and be a bit subtle about it. You might feel a bit awkward, but in my opinion Train Beers are an essential part of your Japan experience.

This beer is an Extra Pale Ale. I looked it up and the thing that makes pale ale taste like a pale, I think, is the hoppiness. Whatever it is, this beer has a LOT of it. Fortunately I like this flavour, but if you aren't into it, it's going to be way too strong. I was glad to have some of the beef jerky on hand to balance it all out. Apart from that it was really refreshing and delicious.



This beer is brewed in Nagano, a bit south of where I live. I checked out their website and they appear to have a number of beers available. I've seen a few of them before in 7/11s around here, but I didn't realise they were the same company as this Captain Crow one, so I'll be getting some on the way home to try for sure. Looking further I found that they have a restaurant here in Nagano.

There's a great write up about it here: http://beertengoku.com/2016/03/16/restaurant-oh-la-ho/

Looks unreal and I can't wait to go.



You'll be able to find this beer in many places around Nagano. I've seen it in 7/11s, restaurants and a few of the smaller liquor stores. The smaller liquor store tend to have more variety and more local beers. As I've said before, places like Takagi are terrible for finding local or craft beers. Keep an eye out, you'll definitely spot this distinctive can and be crushing them in no time.

Remember, always train beer responsibly. Don't be loud, just enjoy the views on your journey and be good.

Monday 6 February 2017

Matsumoto Brewery - Traditional Bitter, Pint






Name: Traditional Bitter

Brewery: Matsumoto Brewery

Style: Bitter

Purchased at: Matsumoto Brewery Tap Room

Price: ¥900

Taste: 9/10

Alcohol Level: 5%

Music: I was listening to Amusement Parks on Fire a lot at the time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhsWO6VI9XU

Snack: Pancakes.

Website: http://matsu-brew.com/


We were heading down to Matsumoto City in central Nagano for some exclusive pancakes and I decided to check if there was a beer brewery somewhere in the area. Matsumoto is a really cool place, it has some really nice old streets to walk around and some bloody great restaurants, so I thought there might be a brewery nearby. Sure enough, I came across the Matsumoto Brewery, and their tap room was right in town, so we decided to check it out. The venue has a small bar downstairs and a small room upstairs with a few tables. Downstairs was packed so we grabbed a pint of the Traditional Bitter and sat upstairs.

I've had regular bitter beers many times in the past that were pretty shitty. I associated the name 'bitter beer'' with a shitty, mass produced beer, I went in thinking it might be a bit crap. This wasn't the case at all, it was extremely smooth and delicious. I began to feel extremely cozy. The warm room and the old Japanese streets around me started to feel very comfy and I was ready to take a walk around. Maybe it was the beer talking though.

I believe they had two beers on tap, and four beers for sale to take home in bottles. I grabbed the four to try later. I tried the Traditional Bitter again at home and can safely say nothing was lost in bottling it up and enjoying it at home. It was still a terrific, tasty beer.

I really like their company slogan, ``WE NEED MORE BEER!!!`` I feel like they get me. They have bags and Tshirts with this printed on them 



If you find yourself in Matsumoto, I strongly recommend you check this place out. The staff there speak some English, so it's perfect for travelers who want to try some excellent, local craft beer. Taking a look at their facebook page, they seem to put on a lot of events around the town. They certainly are a lively bunch who want to get their beer out there and enjoyed amongst the people. So get out there, support them and drink a lot of their beer.