Fujizakura Brewery - Weizen 330ml bottle

Name: Fujizakura Heights Weizen

Brewery: Fujizakura beer.

Style: Weizen

Purchased at: Snow Monkey Beer Live bottle shop.

Price: ¥500

Taste: 8.5/10

Alcohol Level: 5%

Music: Still listening to Eternal Champion a lot. Also listening to Visigoth a bit, going through a real heavy metal throw back phase at the moment. I can't stand power metal right now though for some reason, so it's difficult to find modern heavy metal bands that don't drift into power metal territory and at the same time don't suck.

Snack: I had a hot dog with curry sauce on it, it was really good, perfect with beer.

Website: http://www.fujizakura-beer.jp/

Experience.

It's finally a great time to be alive again here. The snow has pissed off for a few months and it's

getting warmer everyday, bloody great.

When the sakura trees are in bloom everyone has picnics in the parks under the trees. Everyone uses the same blue tarp and most people are drinking beers and having fun. It's like everyone can finally come out of their winter hovels and celebrate being able to go outside again.

On this particular outing I took two beers with me, both of which were purchased at the snow monkey beer live festival. The first was this weizen which comes from somewhere near Mt. Fuji. This beer was very fruity and full tasting. Very delicious and it suited being outside in the sun with flowers very much.

The design on the bottle was also cool. It was pink which matched the flowers and I think the cap even had a sakura leaf on it. I just grabbed any beers from the fridge as we left, so this one must have jumped to the front to be a part of the spring festivities. Upon looking at the bottle again, I realised the brewery actually has "sakura" in it's name, so yeah it was definitely the right choice to take to a hanami.

I've never seen this beer for sale anywhere before, but perhaps if you are travelling in the Mt. Fuji area you will find it. I plan on climbing Mt. Fuji, so I'll definitely be picking up a few of these when I'm in the area.

Looking on their website, it looks like the have a restaurant in Kawaguchiko near Mt. Fuji, which is one of my favourite towns in Japan. I cannot recommend going to this town enough, it's really beautiful and you get an unreal view of Mt. Fuji.

Matsumoto Brewery - Pale Ale 330ml bottle

Name: Traditional Bitter

Brewery: Matsumoto Brewery

Style: Pale Ale

Purchased at: Matsumoto Brewery Tap Room

Price: ¥500

Taste: 8/10

Alcohol Level: 5%

Music: Akhlys - The Dreaming
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_SK1Gn63f0

Ferocious and dark black metal.

Snack: I was cooking spaghetti

Website: http://matsu-brew.com/

Experience.

I forget why but I wanted to make spaghetti bolognese from scratch, if you count using canned tomatoes as from scratch. I think I'd been eating a lot of crap at the time, so I wanted something that wasn't dripping in oil or too process. I could have eaten some plain vegetables, but

Anyway this is another one of the beers from Matsumoto Brewery. This is a great Pale Ale. It doesn't have that intense hop flavour of some pale ales. Very refreshing and slightly citrusy I guess. The best thing about Matsumoto brewery beers is how fresh they are. They make them all right there.

I hate it when you find out a craft beer company is actually just a small division of a huge beer company. Mainly because of how stupid they think people are. Kirin and Asahi make "craft" beer here in Japan, but they dont try and hide it at least. Their names are all over the label. Australian beer companies dont do that though, they try to make it seem authentic. Craft beer companies should start in someones garage or by a group of people who want to go out on their own and make something cool, not a board room by a company cashing in on a growing trend and trying to increase their already massive profits. I probably have no idea what I'm talking about here by the way.

I still like the Matsumoto bitter beer the best of what I've tried from them, but this is definitely a delicious Pale Ale that I would love to have again.

By the way, you can see the Snow Monkey Beer Live glass in action here. Only problem with it is the glass is really thin. My premium malts glass broke last night, which I was pretty sad about. If the snow monkey beer glass breaks ill be really sad.

Beer Venue: Oriental Brewing in Kanazawa

Name: Oriental Brewing in Kanazawa

Brewery: Various

Style: Various

Purchased at: Ticket purchased online, there is help for English speakers.

Price: ¥700

Taste: 10/10

Alcohol Level: Various

Music: Been listening to Eternal Champion a lot.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODNqxcRQGH4

Snack: I'd just eaten a lot of sushi, so I couldn't eat any of the great looking pizzas they had there unfortunately.

Website: http://www.orientalbrewing.com/

Experience:


Over the spring holidays my special lady and I took a trip to a city called Kanazawa. It's a beautiful little city on the Japan sea in the Toyama prefecture. People like to describe it as a smaller Kyoto, but I think they should just focus on being themselves, they have enough to offer.

While there I discovered a local micro brewery called Oriental Brewing. It was a really nice little bar that had two house brewed beers on tap and about 6 other craft beers from different parts of Japan, including the 11% beer I tried at snow monkey beer live.

The bar itself actually has a small brewery attached, which is really rare to see in Japan. I wanted to take a picture but there was a guy in there so I didn't, in hindsight I should have just taken it.



The house brewed beers were delicious. There was a Weizen and a Yuzu beer, Yuzu being a Japanese lemon. I don't even know if they bottle these beers, so you'll have to go there to try them.











They also make some great looking food. We had just been to a really nice sushi place, so I was full as. I really wanted to order a pizza, but we were going to a geisha performance that night and didn't want to feel like compelte shit. The lady working at the bar actually rolled out the dough, put on the toppings and cooked the pizza right behind the bar in an oven. This again is a really rare thing to see in Japan. It's great to see people doing cool things like this.

Oriental Brewing is right near Kenrokuen Garden. If you go to Kanazawa you will almost certainly visit this garden, so this is a great place to go while you are in the area. Also, they host English speaking geisha evenings nearby which is 100% definitely worth checking out as well. They are real geishas and you can play a drinking game with them.

If you are in Kanazawa definitely go here, and don't eat anything beforehand, save your appetite for all the beers and pizza.

You can find pictures of all the stuff I missed on their website. Looks like they really have their shit together, sick dudes.

Beer Event: Snow Monkey Beer Live.

Name: Snow Monkey Beer Live

Brewery: Various

Style: Various

Purchased at: Ticket purchased online, there is help for English speakers.

Price: ¥4500 per ticket

Taste: 10/10

Alcohol Level: Various, one of the beers with 10% but didnt taste like it.

Music: Toe and Jizue

Snack: I ate super spicy fried chicken, quesadillas and a sausage that made my breath reek but tasted unreal.

Website: http://snowmonkey.jp/

Experience:

On the 18th and 19th of March there was a music festival in Shiga Kogen, Nagano. Shiga Kogen is a big mountain range that would be well known to anyone that comes to Japan to ski. Also a beautiful place to explore and wander in summer. 

The festival was called Snow Monkey Beer Live. A bunch of really cool Japanese bands were playing. As well as that, a heap of craft breweries come and set up small bars in the concert hall. You get a special beer glass and a bunch of beer tickets, and then you can try a whole lot of beers from all over Japan. There was awesome food too.

Of the bands playing, I was particularly excited to see Jizue and Toe. I couldn’t believe these bands were playing so close to my house.

There was still a lot of snow once we started getting into the mountains. I was surprised because down in town theres not a flake left.

I tried a lot of different beers but decided I wasn’t going to review them all. Instead I bought a bunch from the bottle shop they have set up. It was unreal walking into the room and seeing all the different cool beers from all over Japan. I only bought 6, but I wanted them all.

                            This is the glass you get, it's my main glass now.

On the day my favourite beer was one that was infused with a smokey flavour somehow. I can’t remember which company made it, but the point is there was a lot of cool beers to try.

Even if you aren’t a fan of the bands playing, it’s still definitely worth going. The range of beer was terrific, it’s cool to see so many people making cool beers in Japan.

If bands like Toe and Jizue are playing, I can’t wait to see who is on next years bill. There were three shows all up. One on Saturday night then two on Sunday, a midday one and an evening one. For each ticket you buy you’ll get 5 beer tickets. 

About the shuttle bus. Apparently there is a shuttlebus that runs from Yudanaka station up to the event. Its kinda hard to find information about it on the website, but when we got to the festival a guy gave us the schedule. Maybe if you click around enough on the website you can find it. There are also other local busses running but they stop before the festival finishes.