Give a few hundred brewers the same porter recipe and none of them are going to taste the same. And maybe none of the brews will taste as good as Swan Lakeâs. Having won their first gold medal in the porter category at the 2000 World Beer Cup, they have continued to make excellent porters and win similar awards over the last decade. Just this past year they were again voted the worldâs best porter at the World Beer Awards. But awards arenât everything. And, as Swan Lakeâs example shows, neither are recipes. The consistency with which they make high quality craft beer is, in the opinion of many, what makes them one of Japanâs, and perhaps one of the worldâs, best craft breweries.
Honda and Watanabe have been at the helm of brewery operations from the very beginning, with the Furuta twins (the co-owners) handling the business and management operations. What surprised us most as we toured the beautiful Swan Lake facilities and listened to their history was how unabashedly they admit to having received most of their recipes from the man who taught them how to brew, Ed Tringali. They opened in August of 1997 and, like almost all the fledgling craft breweries at that time, needed some overseas help.
Relates Honda, âI arrived in July. I knew Ed was going to leave in a month so I was determined to learn as much from him as I could. Ed couldnât speak Japanese at all, so we had an interpreter. The technical vocabulary was beyond the interpreter, but I at least understood that much.â Both Honda and Watanabe had attended the same specialty school in Niigata, where they learned brewing methods, and they entered Swan Lake together, but admit they didnât really know what craft beer was at the time.
Taking over a brewery under such conditions would seem absolutely ludicrous to a brewer from a more established beer culture, but this was the norm back then. Inevitably, Japan was quickly populated by sub-par craft breweries, many of which failed, and âji-biruâ (craft brew) made a bad name for itselfâthe stigma still persists today, in fact, among the general population. Watanabe and Honda, through discipline and perhaps a little luck, persevered. Furuta adds, âWe missed the early craft beer boom, so in a way we were lucky.â Lucky to have a realistic sense of their sales and demand, thatâs for certain.
Honda and Watanabe were cautious in their approach in the early years. âWe learned to brew four of Edâs recipes with him, and he left two more for us to try on our own. But we didnât attempt those for another two or three years. Weâve used the same recipes over the years. In 2001, we devised our first recipe: a barley wine. But we thought it over for about four years before we finally actually made it in 2005. We made it again in 2006, tweaking it a little.â If youâve ever had Swan Lakeâs barley wine, then you know that these are two brewers who donât just simply follow someone elseâs recipes well. They make great original beer, too. Theyâve also brewed a Belgian IPA and in 2010 debuted their imperial stoutâanother fantastic beer with beautiful body, great balance and plenty of punch.
Their partnership is interesting. It seems that Honda does most of the brewing while Watanabe works on sourcing the ingredients. Have they ever had any failures? âWe havenât had to dump anything, but,â they look at each other and laugh, âwe did have an explosion once. When we first opened, I went to loosen the valve on the fermentation tank. Well, when I did that, it suddenly started gushing out and we couldnât stop it. We were in complete panic.â
Their storehouse contains mostly what you would expect: an array of malts and quite a bit of American hops. âWe basically brew American-style beers, and have been using Centennial and Cascade from the start.â The brewery itself is bright and clean, and the equipment is in an unusual triangular-shaped room. Itâs visible through huge windows in the adjoining restaurant and lobby, which also displays all their medals and awards.
The Swan Lake âcampus,â so to speak, includes gorgeous Japanese gardens and several historical buildings. The âGarden House Ikarashiâ is an impressive piece of traditional architecture dating back to the Meiji era, with additions to it in the Taisho era. It accommodates weddings, parties and meetings and serves exquisite multi-course meals.
Swan Lakeâs location is admittedly inconvenient. Far from Niigata Station, youâll need to use local trains, buses and/or taxies. But the journey makes you all that much thirstier for the good stuff. There are a couple of decent onsen nearby as well, so why not create a reason to head in that direction anyway? Of course, you need not travel all the way to Niigata to experience their brews. Craft beer bars that want to be guaranteed good taste will likely be serving them up. And weâll be drinking them up.
This article was published in Japan Beer Times # () and is among the limited content available online. Order your copy through our online shop or download the digital version from the iTunes store to access the full contents of this issue.
