Yo Ho Brewing - Karuizawa Kogen Beer Belgian White

Name: Karuizawa Kogen Belgian White

Brewery: Yo Ho Brewing


Style: Belgian White

Purchased at: A restaurant in Karuizawa

Price: ¥500 (Restaurant price)

Taste: 9/10

Alcohol Level: 5%

Music: Summoning - Stronghold
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SuoR8wEW0Bo

Snack: Roasted Chicken at the restaurant.

Website: http://karuizawa-kogen-beer.com/

Experience.
I'm a little confused about who brewed this beer exactly. I thought that Karuizawa Kogen Beer was its own company and brewery, but on the website it says it is owned by Yo Ho brewing who are also based in Karuizawa and gave us the undeniable masterpiece known as the Yona Yona. I'm just going to assume this is a company owned by Yo Ho until I can find out what is really going on. Looking on their websites it appears as if there are two separate companies, but then I see the Yona Yona label in different pictures. And the bio mentions Yo Ho brewing. Enigmatic and confusing! You don't need to be a genius to drink and enjoy their beers though, so here we go.

Karuizawa is a town in Nagano, Japan. It is fancy as heck, lots of rich people shops and skiing and all that. It has two big breweries that are brewing great beer. Yo Ho brewing and the Karuizawa Brewing Company. Both of these breweries are based in a city called Saku though, which is maybe half an hour away from Karuizawa. I'm sure I've mentioned it before, but Karuizawa is a place where rich people from Tokyo have their summer or winter homes. Maybe they don't have the room for big breweries. I'm sure some marketing magic was involved because, no offence intended to Saku, but Karuizawa I imagine would be a lot easier to sell as a luxurious place where beer flows freely or whatever.

Anyway, I've reviewed two of the beers from this company before, but they were their all year beers. This is the first seasonal one of theirs but as I said you shouldnt have too much trouble finding it. I'm not even sure what season this beer is meant to be available, it doesn't really matter, what matters is the taste.

And boy, the taste is unreal. This beer is sweet and fruity. I swear I could taste oranges or something. I can see it becoming a bit sickly if you had too much of it, but one or two and you are in heaven. Looks so nice in the glass too.

These beers can easily be found in Karuizawa, Nagano. Just about anywhere that sells craft beers will sell this beer. Maybe it will be out of season when you look for it, but don't worry because it will be coming back.

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.