Kamakura, despite its twenty million yearly tourists, still feels like a sleepy seaside town with unassuming residents in pursuit of simple, satisfying lifestyles. You wouldn’t call Kamakura life in the fast lane. Neither would you call its local beer bold and earth-shattering in flavor. It suits the culture of the town. And, as more discerning drinkers discover the beer, we think it will suit their tastes for something subtle.

Kamakura Beer began making craft beer in 1998, after obtaining its license the previous year. President Imamura bemoaned that there was no local alcoholic beverage and was setting out to change that. He needed a good brewer in a town where, in his words, “expectations are high.”

He describes Goto coming to them twelve years ago as fate. With the original brewer having fallen ill, Imamura took a chance with this complete novice and got more than he expected. Hiring her over the other applicants wasn’t a complete gamble. Nor was it typical.

“She sent us a handwritten postcard saying how much she wanted to make beer. No standard resume like the other candidates. I was blown away. I really felt as if she wanted to meet us so I called her in.”

The two laugh now about their first encounter.

“She showed up with her mom and dad! She mostly sat there the whole time while they asked all the questions.”

Goto explains, “I told my parents not to come but they were worried about me working for a small brewery like this.”

Her parents, though, were in a way responsible for her interest in craft beer, unusual perhaps for a young woman fresh out of a biotech school. According to Goto, because of her father’s job with NHK, she lived with her family on Ceylon between the ages of ten and thirteen.

“I ate a lot of flavorful food there. I think that experience influenced my taste.”

She later took an interest in fermentation techniques and wondered what she could make. When her school took a training trip to Belgium for a week, for the purpose of studying cheese and wine techniques, she happened to drink a lambic. That spark ignited a passion.

“When I came back I immediately began looking around for a brewery and saw that Kamakura Beer was close.”

Goto came in after the really rocky initial period that perhaps all breweries have to go through and which many did not survive.

“When we first started out,” Imamura reminisces, “I drank beers from all over to try to determine what kind of beer we wanted to make. Well, I discovered Australian beer, which struck me as quite different from European or American beers that everyone else was making. I thought, this is what I like! We eventually signed a contract with an Australian company to produce the brewery and teach us. After we had already paid quite a bit of money, the company went bankrupt! I flew down there only to discover that the actual equipment was in New Zealand. An old employee felt sorry for me, I guess, and helped us bring the equipment back and set it up. Luckily, it was nice equipment.”

Unluckily, after they started brewing, it was apparent that something wasn’t right. The wort wasn’t fermenting. The overseas brewer took off. Things looked grim. Then a savior came in an unlikely form: a former Kirin employee of Spring Valley, who helped repair the system and then became an assistant.
Imamura says a Eureka moment came for them when their usual order of a standard weizen yeast yielded a flavor profile quite different from what they had been accustomed to in their brews. It was a total fluke.

“That yeast was our deai (fateful encounter),” he says, “That was ten years ago and we’ve kept that strain and now use it in 80% of our beers.”

Kamakura Beer now makes eight beers, some of which are only available in certain locales after which they are named—Hayama, Enoshima, Yokosuka. Even their regular line-up is really only available in Kamakura, with draft served at but a handful of locations. Their approach is to make beers that pair well with the delicious local cuisine, without paying much attention to strict categories of style.

Goto explains, “Imamura doesn’t tell me what kind of beer to make. Rather, he asks what we can pair with a certain flavor. We look at the local specialty foods and then I say, for example, this kind of beer might go well with that. I don’t want the flavors of my beer to impede the enjoyment of food.”

Imamura notes that people are often surprised to learn that their brewer is female, especially some of the more conservative regional chefs whose industry is definitely male dominated.

Goto relishes the challenge of debunking stereotypes, “I don’t want people to say women can’t be good brewers so I even make a point of carrying the 25kg bags of malt all by myself. People also think women don’t know machinery, so I do much of the maintenance by myself.”

Petite, kind and flashing her big smile, she seems proud of this, but is no doubt even prouder of her beer and the acceptance it has achieved locally. Strolling later with Imamura through Kamakura’s quaint back streets to a delightful little sausage joint that serves their bottles, we notice quite a few other places advertising its sale. If Kamakura has high expectations, then Goto has higher standards, and the ubiquity of this beer in Kamakura is evidence that she’s achieving them.

http://www.kamakura-beer.co.jp

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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.