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.

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.