Sierra Nevada Brewing Company is a testament to the American dream, however elusive that dream may seem to many in America these days with concerns about income disparity growing. Founder Ken Grossman cobbled an early incarnation of the brewery together with languishing equipment and minimal resources in the semi-rural college town of Chico in northern…

Shiroyama sits right smack in the middle of Kagoshima City, where the Satsuma Rebellion came to its violent end in 1887. These days, Kagoshima’s premier lodging, the Shiroyama Kankô Hotel, occupies the spot and provides a home for Shiroyama Brewery. The brewery was originally located in Fukuoka, inside of what was once the Hakata Shiroyama…

If you are the kind of beer lover who, like me, regularly goes into bars and stores searching for new and strange beers to try, then it is likely that you have come across the curiously-named Owa beers of Belgium. The name is a neologism combining the characters 欧 signifying “Europe” and 和 signifying “Japan,”…

Mount Mukabaki in Miyazaki prefecture is home to the Mukabaki Waterfall, one of Japan’s “best 100,” and halfway up that same mountain is a brewery whose name is gaining attention nationwide: Hideji Beer. The Hideji Beer brand launched in 1996 under parent company Nishida, a wholesaler of petroleum products (of all things) and includes the…

Kanagawa prefecture is home to thirteen craft breweries, ranking it second behind geographically vast Hokkaido. In what we may appropriately call the Craft Beer Prefecture of Kanagawa, in the coastal town of Zushi, the region’s newest craft brewery opened in September, 2012: Yorocco Beer. Brewer-owner Kichise Akio ran a bar in Enoshima for eight years…