There are two ways to understand
Japanese beer. If you go to Japan and ask 99.99% of Japanese citizens, they will
only be able to tell only tell you about one kind of beer: the mass produced
tasteless swill that most people drink. The other kind of beer is Japan’s craft
beer movement, which sadly only has a small following in Japan. Most people in
the world and, yes, most people in Japan, don’t know that Japan is one of the
highest beer producers in the world when it comes to the number of beers
produced. No other Asian nation – and very few European nations – produce
the same amount of beers as Japan’s craft beer movement.
In my time in Japan, I searched high
and low in each restaurant and pub to find a beer that wasn’t one of the 10
mass-produced pale lagers. Eventually, I found small shops and dark corners in
Kyoto that sold a few. Over the course of two years, I tracked down about 120
Japanese beers and am only now realising that there are over 3,000. In my last
days there, I visited a Japanese beer museum that was assembled by one Japanese
man over the course of just 4-5 years. It proves that Japan is a brewing
nation.
What is really interesting is what they
brew. Unlike the UK, where even the smallest brewery has some level of distribution
in place, most Japanese beers come from small microbreweries that usually only
sell to locals while 99% of the market is dominated by 10 beers. By locals, I
mean that one or two places may sell the beer occasionally; otherwise the beer
is either consumed by the brewer or sold to the happy few that live near the
brewery. And since Japan doesn’t have a history of beer, their definition of
brewing is really different and experimental.
Each and every Japanese craft beer could be in a style common to any
brewing country, from Australian Lagers to Russian Stouts. There are some truly
horrible green tea beers and some truly marvellous Imperial Chocolate Stouts. Although
the UK has a long history of brewing, it doesn’t have the variety and randomness
of drinking a Japanese craft beer, which could taste like almost anything.
I currently review the beers that I have
drunk on ratebeer.com, which is – I think – the largest beer database on the Internet
and have over 700 reviews at present. I have added many English and Japanese
beers as well as a few others to their database, and was occasionally among the
first to review them. Such a pleasure is generally rare however as the database
is rather substantial. Most beers I come across have usually been rated by more
than a handful of people, with general amount of reviews for most beers being
between 200 and 5,000. So, outside of Japan, I usually expect the beer I drink
to be already in the database. Most
beers that can be found internationally are listed on ratebeer.com.
However, I recently came across a
strange anomaly. I visited Japan again this summer and found myself in a
quieter area of Kyoto where I came across a small liquor shop. I popped inside,
as I usually do, to see if it had anything interesting. Now, by this point, I
knew most of the foreign beers that I was likely to find after my time in Japan,
but I was surprised to find a new one. In this little quiet sake shop that sold
the 10 Japanese common lagers as well as the 10 common international lagers
like Budweiser and Heineken, I found a bottle of Samichlaus Classic Malt Liquor,
14%, from Austria. I thought it would be interesting to try it since I’ve never
had a malt liquor before, but I was appalled at the charge of £7.50. In my mind,
a malt liquor was a beer-type product somehow lower in quality and cheaper to
make than a simple pale lager. I believed malt liquor to be the cheapest kind
of beer available and therefore generally used for those who are financially
limited but still want to get drunk. It certainly wasn’t something I was
willing to pay £7.50 for and so the beer was discarded.
Boy was I shocked when I found it in
Lancaster, examining the beer fridge at the Sun Hotel. I had never seen this
beer before, I found it for the second time in two weeks and it had only been
rated 8 times on Ratebeer. How could this unpopular, most likely poor quality
beer find itself across the planet in the most random of places? I knew that
this time, regardless of the cost, I needed to taste it and see what it was. To
my surprise I was charged the same £7.50.
Pouring the beer, I truly expected
it to be horrid. How could it possibly be good with the image that malt liquor
has? Now, I would like to think I have an idea what good beer tastes like and this
beer was incredible: one of the best beers I have ever had. It was a complex
German lager. This beer needs to be aged for 5 years (the bottle says best
before 2017) and drunk with chocolates. It gave me a new definition of what
beer is.
Marsiblursi (2781) from Göteborg, Sweden explains it perfectly
on ratebeer.com:
Pours an oily dark brown with orange
to red highlight. Small head. The aroma holds buttery oak up front with note of
wood shop, coconut, salted peanuts and light vanilla. The malt is all about
toffee-ish and fudge-like caramel. Undertones of brown sugar, warming alcohol,
leather, cherry jam, resin, prunes and figs. The nose is not complex but super
mega uber yummy (and I take yummy over complex any day). The flavour is medium
to heavily sweet, light bitter and tiny acidic. Super oaky and brutal malty.
Undertones of dark sugar and dark fruits. The mouthfeel is round, soft and
light sticky with a near light to medium carbonation. Light astringent, light
numbing (from the well hidden, light woodsy alcohol), super buttery and
caramelly finish. Lingering aftertaste. Medium to full bodied. Typical top 50
material, too bad it isn’t more available.
What is the lesson? Always try
something new when you can. The name ‘Malt Liquor’ shows
something strange about naming and laws rather than the style itself. So
another lesson is: don't believe the style on the label. It’s not a malt liquor
as the name is understood now, in the way a barley wine is not a wine!
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