Festival grounds across Japan are littered with empty cups and beer zombies. Brewers made it out on the last helicopter. Alcohol Apocalypse, aka summer beer festival season, has ended. We hope you had fun.

It’s hard to believe that just a few years ago, we attended all the craft beer festivals in Japan. The number of festivals has increased exponentially and attending all is just impossible now. This growth is good overall, but quite frankly, we’re not sure why some of them even exist. What’s the motivation behind them? We find ourselves returning to the tried and true ones.

Two in particular, however, caught our attention in their inaugural edition: the Ofuna Beer Festival in Kanagawa and the Craft Beer Festival in Matsumoto. The former was a smallish affair, but held on temple grounds with a huge statue of Kannon (goddess of mercy), lit up like a nightclub, looking on. With its proximity so close to a major transit station in this populous prefecture, we suspect this one could take off. And Kannon liked the light show. The Matsumoto festival was held in Matsumoto castle. Need we say more? Either we have a castle fetish or have watched too many Kurosawa movies, but what a cool venue. Beer ninja made off with much of the beer.

We decided to make the long journey to Hokkaido for Sapporo Craft Beer Forest in its second year. This was quite a pleasant vacation to Japan’s northern climes, given how filthy hot the rest of the country is in July after the monsoon breaks. With some top-notch northern breweries serving and a friendly, local vibe, this festival was definitely worth it and we hope to see it grow. Maybe Sapporo’s population will grow, too, with all the refuges that don’t want to return to the heat.

CBA’s (formerly JCBA) BeerFes series in Japan’s major cities had been starting to feel ordinary with so many new festivals popping up featuring live music and other entertainment. Nevertheless, the installments in Nagoya, Osaka and Yokohama could only be called successful. Even with ticket prices having increased in recent years, attendees have increased as well. It seems many people still prefer the stripped-down, all-you-can-drink approach. Certainly, this encourages guests to focus more on the beer. At Yokohama, the biggest and best of the BeerFes series, “beer tours” were organized where guests were led to the booths of a number of breweries for tastings and explanations. We think this is a great idea; education enhances beer appreciation. Beer enhances beer appreciation.

Following in the footsteps of many great pioneering craft beer festivals held at Sumida Riverside Hall in Tokyo, the Nippon Craft Beer Festival also hosted seminars at its annual event. That, and a “beer-con” (“beer social”) for over 300 men and women. Hey, reversing Japan’s declining birth rate has to start somewhere, right?

Niigata Craft Beer no Jin once again took over the roofed arcade of that major northeastern city close to Swan Lake Beer’s headquarters. While the event ran on a ticketing system, guests could exchange them for not only beer and food but other things, like an aroma therapy session. That clever idea has a whole range of possibilities.

Tanabata Beer Festa—one of our favorites—featured everything we always like about this event: an outdoor venue with a roof, plenty of food options, a relaxed atmosphere with places to sit, and a handful of brewers like Hidatakayama that you normally don’t see at festivals. Fujizakura once again won the “My Best Brewery” award by popular vote of attendees. But everyone knows it’s not just because Miyashita makes world-class German-style beer. It’s also because he is always the best dressed.

Guests from around the world attended Japan’s premier pairing event, Le Beau Mariage, held in upscale Happoen. Most were visiting Japan for the International Craft Beer Conference later that week. Our senior writer Kumagai Jinya picked his best pairing from the event: “smoked scallop and wasabi vinegar miso with Yokohama Beer’s weizen.” He explains, “Since the smoke aroma and weizen’s aroma in part derive from the same substance, the aromatics of the two really complement each other. The wasabi’s spicy character almost seems to enhance the weizen’s spiciness, while the acidity of the vinegar miso likewise enhances the acidity of the weizen. The flavors of this rich pairing were balanced perfectly.”
Again, these weren’t all the festivals—there were certainly other good ones. And there are more to come in the following months. Check in to our Facebook page for updates.

Across the Pacific Ocean, Sierra Nevada was dominating beer headlines with its Beer Camp Across America, a seven-city traveling beer festival. That’s right, it was like a carnival with a convoy of tour buses. One of its aims was to be the “largest craft beer celebration in history.” In terms of overall attendance, they probably achieved that goal. A key feature of the tour was the mind-boggling number of beers that were available. In the cities where the “camp” stopped, Sierra Nevada served together with hundreds of breweries from the surrounding region. The biggest treat for many beer fans across America, however, was Sierra Nevada’s set of twelve collaboration beers with some of America’s best breweries. Cases were released in select parts of America and sold out very quickly.

Japan Beer Times publisher Ry Beville had the rare opportunity to get a case and also try all the brews fresh on tap at Sierra Nevada’s Torpedo Room. He writes, “These were some of the best examples of what collaboration beers should be. Collaboration beers have become rather common these days, which isn’t bad necessarily, but too many of them seem to have been conceived for marketing reasons alone. Where’s the actual brewing collaboration? With these Beer Camp beers you really get the sense that the brewers were exchanging knowledge and trying to create something new—beers that showcased their strengths.” How about a Beer Camp across Japan someday? Let’s all hope.

Meanwhile, Sierra Nevada’s Torpedo Room hosted a lecture with world-famous professor Charlie Bamforth, who heads the brewing education program at the University of California, Davis. This is the one of the world’s premier brewing schools and Bamforth is an extremely popular professor, with students apparently signing up on waiting lists for years. We can see why; he was very knowledgeable, engaging and hilarious. Who will Japan’s great brewing sensei be? It’s a role yet to be filled…

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.