In early January, George Juniper left his native England and his job at Dark Star Brewery to join the “international sales and product development” team at Kiuchi, makers of the popular Hitachino Nest beer. We sat down with him to hear his opinions about craft beer, as we learned he started homebrewing when he was only thirteen!

“Actually, my mom taught me. She used to make wine when I was a child because she liked wine. She bought all my brewing equipment for me because she thought it would make a productive hobby. She thought it would be better for me to create something rather than just hanging around. And in England, it isn’t illegal to homebrew.”

The passion for beer brewing remained throughout his teens and early twenties, when he started studying Japanese privately.

“I was a little bit of the Japanophile and then I came here and got hooked.”

He was also impressed with some of the beer.

“My favorite so far has been Shiga Kogen’s IPA. I’ve also recently enjoyed the brews from Yokohama Brewery.”

So was it the beer that brought him to Japan?

“I had wanted to come here for a few years. I’d met a lot of good people on previous trips. Last year, I realized I wanted to be a part of the scene here. Japan has certainly improved a lot since the first time I visited―in both quality and range of styles―but I think there’s a lot of room for improvement. There’s no deep history of beer brewing in Japan like in England, so there isn’t a clear standard for many people.”

During his four and a half years at Dark Star, George learned a lot about those standards.

“As a production manager, I used my knowledge of homebrewing to influence beers like the London Brown Ale. It was quite sweet and malty, low in alcohol and not too hoppy. Then there was the stout. It was quite dry and also not very hoppy. I thought that not being hoppy suits that style best. Generally, I like hop aroma instead of hop bitterness.”

Do the English not like hoppiness? George explains that these actually ran counter to the trend:

“There are a lot of American-style beers in England now. Dark Star is actually famous for doing beers with a lot of American hops, but with a British body so that they are not as heavy as your double IPA. I think the hop trend is a beautiful thing, but when you use so many hops, you typically have to make a high alcohol beer. It is possible to get just as much flavor from a low alcohol beer. Personally, I like a beer with a lot of flavor but I want to be able to drink it all night, so low alcohol is better. The problem with a double IPA is that after a few pints, you need to start thinking about going home. Our best seller at Dark Star was ‘Hop-head,’ which was 3.8%. It was very light but with a nice hop aroma. People who liked double IPAs were into it.”

George shouldn’t have any trouble selling hoppy beers to Japan’s craft fans, with hoppy American imports gaining popularity quickly. Even some high-IBU Japanese brews, like Thrash Zone’s Hopslave and Minoh’s W-IPA, are enjoying rave reviews.

George adds, “I also worked as a sales advisor at Dark Star and that helped me to understand which beers could sell. I hope to do similar work at Kiuchi, influencing the brewers to make the same low-alcohol, full-flavored beers. Low-alcohol beers perfect for sessioning should go over well with many. The question is, will Hitachino make them? Never a brewery to shy from experimentation, we can probably expect so.

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.