text by Brian Kowalczyk | photography by Matt Gammon Editor’s note: We first wrote about Ise Kadoya beer way back in issue 3, summer 2010. Both their company and ours have come a long way since, so we thought it was more than worth revisiting them. For hundreds of years it has been a fixture…

Text and photos by Professor Mark Meli Yeast is the soul of beer. It is this invisible agent, unknown to humans until the mid-19th century, which takes sweet, simple wort and ferments it into something beautiful. Yeast produces alcohol, the muscle of beer, and CO2, its spirit. Yet yeast never seems to get its fair…

Beer and wood share a complex and fascinating relationship that yields delicious results in the hands of an experienced brewer. Barrel-aged beers are the new stars of the craft beer world because consumers are becoming increasingly excited about the many layers of flavor that unfold on their palates. The truth is brewers are just as…

In the boulder-strewn valley, white steam rises from searing-hot water. It’s like a valley from hell. What else could inhabit such an unforgiving place but a demon? Japan actually has two Jigokudani (“valleys from hell”) of note: one in Yamanouchi, Nagano prefecture, not far from Shiga Kogen Beer, the other in Hokkaido’s Noboribetsu City. There…