by Mark Meli
It wasn’t very long ago that “craft beer” and “Nagoya” were just about mutually exclusive terms. Good Belgian beer was available, but Japanese and other craft imports were extremely hard to find, especially after Kinshachi closed their Beer Circus restaurant. Then in 2010, the first dedicated craft beer pub, Keg Nagoya, opened in the heart of the city. This was joined in 2012 by Grillman and 23 Craft Beerz Nagoya. And finally, this past March, the city’s first craft brewpub opened just a short walk from Nagoya Station.
Y. Market Brewing is run by Okadaya Liquors, the same company that owns Keg and Grillman. They started out with a new brew house in the Yanagibashi Market (hence the catchy name Y. Market). Composed of family-run wholesale enterprises that mainly supply food and drinks to bars and restaurants, the market was the place were Okadaya president Yamamoto Yasuhiro grew up. It pains him to see the business of many of these small shops being taken away by larger chain stores, which is why he chose to locate his new brewpub here. Though slightly removed from the normal drinking area of Nagoya, the brewery may bring a little more life back to the area.
Yamamoto brought in Kachi Makoto as his head brewer. Craft beer fans in Japan will know Kachi from his previous work at Kisoji Beer in southern Nagano. He now has come south down the Chuo line in order to serve a big-city audience that is in for a big surprise.
The route by which Kachi became a brewer is a fascinating one. Ten years back, he was an exchange student in Montreal when he ran out of money. This led him to take a full-time job and switch to a working visa. More money in his pocket gave him the opportunity to start drinking locally-made craft beer, which is certainly not lacking in that city. He tried his first IPA and was hooked. He then spent all his free time checking out the brewpubs and bars in the area. He met Luc Bim Lafontaine, then at Dieu du Ciel! brewpub (and presently brewing in Ibaraki), who gave him the idea to start home brewing. Kachi described to me the excitement of brewing his first batch of beer: “Of course it didn’t taste very good at all, but it was so much fun to have made it myself.” He describes how he brewed so often that he would run out of bottles, and in order to empty some, would invite his friends over to drink the mediocre beer. Little by little he got better, though, and after returning to Japan, Kachi landed a job in the Kisoji Brewery, not far from his home town of Nakatsugawa.
About a year after Kachi joined Kisoji, the head brewer left, so Kachi found himself the new head brewer. He still lacked confidence, he says, but tried to make up for his lack of experience with study. Proficient in English, he got hold of specialty books on yeast and hops, the likes of which had not been published in Japanese, and tried to learn as much about the technical side of the brewer’s art as possible.
The move to Nagoya was inspired by the passion and dedication of Yamamoto and his staff. “I want to be able to brew the beers I imagine myself making, to the best of my ability,” he related, “but just brewing a good beer is only one part of the project. Beer has to be served and presented well; a pub has to be managed well. I felt that the people working at Okadaya had the passion to succeed in all parts of the beer business.” So after standing his ground and getting the 1,000 liter brew house of his exact specifications, Kachi agreed to a job that entails a daily round-trip commute of more than five hours.
Y. Market Brewpub opened on March 10th, and has so far featured five different beers on tap. Offering their beers as fresh as possible in their brewpub as well as their sister shops in Nagoya is their first priority, though beer in kegs has also been made available to select bars around Japan. There are as yet no plans to bottle.
I visited the brewpub twice and was deeply impressed by the quality of Y. Market’s beers from the very start. Their first five offerings were all ales, ranging from Primale, a 4.1% abv golden ale with interesting hopping and supreme drinkability, to their top-of-the-line Hysteric IPA, at 7%. This was a wonderfully hopped beer, fruity and fragrant with mild bitterness and restrained sweetness. It was just the first batch, but already Hysteric is one of the tastiest IPAs in Japan.
Gate 7 Black Ale is termed a “free style dark ale,” and was designed as a “gateway” beer into craft. Y.M.B.P. is an American-style pale ale with grapefruit hops and luscious, bready malts. Craft Heart Red was also a great showcase for rich malts, though of course it was hoppy as well.
Hops are showcased in each of these beers, with dry hopping a special characteristic of the brewery. Proudly listed on the brewpub’s menu are the types used in each. These include several hot new varietals that are still not so common in Japan, such as Mosaic, Saphir, and Motueka, alongside your well-known American “C” and “S” hops.
As much as he wants to showcase hops, though, for Kachi it is the yeast that is the life of a beer, and it is in the controlled use of yeasts that he hopes to make a mark on beer in Japan. He is always searching for new and interesting yeasts, then tries to imagine what type of beer might best be made with them, regardless of conventional notions of style. Kachi keeps careful watch on his beers’ fermentation, counting yeast cells and keeping track of their activity and temperature. He pays close attention to attenuation, in order to achieve rich malt flavors without residual sweetness or heaviness.
On my second visit, I was fortunate enough to sample six new beers in various levels of completion. These included a hoppy lager, 2 IPAs, a fruit beer, an English brown ale, and a Belgian wit brewed with Sorachi Ace hops(!). All were coming along nicely, most awaiting a bit more maturation before getting their dose of dry hopping. I can hardly wait to taste how they come out in the end.
Y. Market Brewing is one of the most exciting new things to happen in Japanese craft brewing in a while. Just a month in, and they are already accomplishing great things. As for the future, the sky is the limit. Maybe now Nagoya will finally become a craft beer destination for people from all over the country. Next time you are passing through, give a visit—only ten minutes’ walk from Nagoya Station.
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.
