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…

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 Lake’s. Having won their first gold medal in the porter category at the 2000 World Beer Cup, they have continued to make excellent porters…

The crimson maple leaves of autumn bring visitors in droves to Kyoto, where the architecture of its ancient temples and shrines provides a lovely backdrop to nature’s simpler beauty. Classy restaurants fill with the hungry whose second priority in the ancient capital is to splurge on the world-famous local cuisine. Many, no doubt, will pair…

The 3-day Belgian Beer Weekend Tokyo festival brought some 15,000 people to Roppongi, among them many of Japan’s craft-beer brewers and bar operators, there to taste the finest new Belgian imports. Most would consider the event a huge success, but for Konishi Shintarô, this was just another working weekend. Konishi’s family has been brewing—albeit primarily…

Sake breweries with an established reputation for quality and consistency can generally make a good beer. They understand the care that has to go into ingredient selection, sanitation and the actual brewing process. They understand the appeal of alcohol, too. When the laws changed in the late 90s to allow for smaller scale beer brewing,…