trouble finding hops/yeast in Japan

I brewed in the states for a few years, and it was only as hard as finding the local brew shop. Now i live way out in the boonies in Japan. After talking with the mayor of my town i found out that Japanse law prohibits brewing anything in home over 1% alcohol. He also told me that people generally ignore this rule, and said it it's fine to do whatever i want. That said, barley is a pretty common thing out it the country, i can almost get it for free. Hops are grown here, and its difficult but i can get them. The big problem is brewing yeast. No brew shops here, and i have no clue where to get it. Anyone know anywhere either in japan, or in the states that will ship internationally?

Welcome to the forum!

I know http://www.hopandgrape.co.uk/ ship Europe-wide, and it would be worth asking them if they could ship to Japan - they're very nice people and I'm sure will help if they can. That's the only shop I know about, but I'd be amazed if many homebrew stores in the US didn't ship internationally as well.

Or if you really get stuck, I'm sure one of us on here would be able to put a few packets of dried yeast in an envelope to you.

Whereabouts in Japan? My wife is from there and we visit her family about once a year.

morebeer.com ships internationally.

A4J said:

...morebeer.com ships internationally.

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I've had three or four shipments from them to New Zealand. Best online site I've ever bought from, fast shipping and awesome service.

There is a brewer in Japan on here. I cannot remember his name. Used to boil up on his tiny balcony! called catfish or something...

Yeup : Catfish.

If you really can not find a yeast supplier, you may try keeping one or two slants around. I have a few strains available in my ranch.

A4J said:

Whereabouts in Japan? My wife is from there and we visit her family about once a year.

morebeer.com ships internationally.

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I live in a SMALL rice farming town in Akita. almost as far north as you can get on the main island.


all of the normal places i would order from in the states had told me that Japanese customs were super strict so they wouldn't ship there but maybe the UK will. Luckily my cousin lives a few blocks from my brew shop and bailed me out.

Hi, My name is Dave, I live in Okinawa Japan. I just recently started home brewing. I got my beer kit " coopers" from online. I want to start brewing more with ingrediants from Japan, I am not sure where to buy barley malt extract or hops? Sounds like you know, can you tell me? Also have you tried using bakers yeast because it sounds like you couldnt locate brewers yeast.. anyways, let me know. Thanks.

Hi guys, brewer in the northern island of Hokkaido here, if you are still looking for home brew equipment in japan then www.sakeland.net is a really good service, good range of kits, equipment and hops, grains etc up to an intermediate level. You need a bit of japanese to use the site so let me know if you need help, used them loads and they have really fast service. Theres another site with an enormous range of stuff that I currently can't find the link for but will post when i dig it out

http://www.amy.hi-ho.ne.jp/brew/

The guy's name is Aizawa (相&#28580, he's a good egg and runs a good shop.

jibiru said:

I brewed in the states for a few years, and it was only as hard as finding the local brew shop. Now i live way out in the boonies in Japan. After talking with the mayor of my town i found out that Japanse law prohibits brewing anything in home over 1% alcohol.

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Also about that:

I haven't read the law, but here's an interesting tidbit from the above posted website:

日本国内では度数1%以上のアルコール飲料を造ることは税法上認められておりません

I strongly suspect that the law was designed to prevent the Japanese government from losing your tax money on beer/booze you would make and not purchase.

With that being said, a buddy of mine told me how a family...i believe it was...was fighting the law in court to brew sake. Their reasoning was it's a traditional craft and shouldn't be prohibited.

Another side note with that: It's my understanding that, while it's best to keep it on the DL, if you get caught brewing, nothing serious really happens. I heard of a gentleman a while back, Japanese, who entered into a foreign brewing competition and won. The competition was big and he made news in his hometown. Well, guess who heard about it and was waiting for him when he returned? Yup, govt. If I remember correctly they just said "As long as you know it's illegal..."

Now, I would imagine anyone who's a fool and tries to sell it could find themselves in quite a bit of trouble.

The fact that you can buy beer kits at some major stores in town and a few established online shops probably shows that the law is quite lax, especially for the private brewer who only brews for himself.

That said, I have noticed that Japanese brewers aren't taking any chances when they post their pictures online. They keep their names hidden.

Beerzilla said:

The fact that you can buy beer kits at some major stores in town and a few established online shops probably shows that the law is quite lax, especially for the private brewer who only brews for himself.

That said, I have noticed that Japanese brewers aren't taking any chances when they post their pictures online. They keep their names hidden.

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I was stationed in Japan a few years back. I would look at eBay, sellers will mail overseas for a cost...

King Elessar said:

http://www.amy.hi-ho.ne.jp/brew/

The guy's name is Aizawa (相&#28580, he's a good egg and runs a good shop.

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That's the one! I've had a good scroll through his site many times but have stuck with sake land so far to get the brewing operation off the ground. Will give Aizawa san a try for my next purchase.

Both of those sites are great. I get all of my ingredients from them.
There is also a magazine called "The Japan Beer Times" that has info on craft beer in Japan.
http://japanbeertimes.com/
They don't have many articles about hombrew, because of the ambiguous legal situation I expect, but in their adds you can sometimes find yeast/hops/grain suppliers. In fact I think white labs or wyeast have an add in there every month with their Japanese URL.

Cheers.

Not to steal this thread, but how is the commercial beer in Japan? I recently read an article about some good craft beers coming out of Japan. Just wondering.

Well, things seem to be just taking off now. There are some "Brewfests" in Japan that are seeing more and more people every year. The magazine I linked above is also only about three years old. One problem is that in order to make "Beer" in Japan (and sell it) you need to have a brewery that can produce at least 60,000 liters a year. Which is a tall order for a small business. I think they do this because the Gov. is almost entirely controlled by the big corporations and they want to protect their profits, but whatever.
But as with most things here it all comes down to legal definitions. According to the Gov. only beer made with 67% or more malted barley counts as "Beer" . So if you use corn, rice, wheat, sugar, etc. you can make what we would call beer but is still not Beer.
They would call it "Happōshu".
However!! According to the Japanese Gov. Malt Extract is Not malt.
So if you make an all grain, take some of the wort, dry it, then add the water back when boiling you are ok.
If you want to start a happōshu brewery the minimum capacity required is like 6,000 liters (I have heard of people getting a licence with less but I'm not sure how yet).
So, once people started to realize that you could do this and get around a stupid law (only there to keep corporate profits up, and money flowing into politician's pockets) They started building craft breweries that only make 'happōshu' but rock out brews better than anything the big 4 are pumping out. And once they make a name for themselves and can ramp up production it is much easier to get the full 'Beer Brewery' licence.
So now we are starting to see smaller micros popping up and local beer starting to get into a new Japanese Renaissance.
I can personally recommend quite a few:
Baird Beer
Hitachino Nest
Kaze no Tani no Biru, or "Beer of the Valley of the Wind" (seriously)
Kinshachi Beer
Etc, etc.

In fact a friend of mine who does tours for Japanese language students is running a two day 'Brewery Tour' next month.
So things are looking up. Now all we need to do is get the stupid 1% law overturned and people can really start to learn about good beer here.

FatherJack said:

http://www.amy.hi-ho.ne.jp/brew/

The guy's name is Aizawa (相&#28580, he's a good egg and runs a good shop.

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This is who I buy most of my stuff from. Great guy, and sets up home brew meets every so often. The last one was at a newly opened bar, The Watering Hole (in between Yoyogi and Shinjuku), that's in the process of getting their brewing license.

American hops are hard to find here though, so I have family and friends send me hops and yeast from the U.S.

kwingert said:

Not to steal this thread, but how is the commercial beer in Japan? I recently read an article about some good craft beers coming out of Japan. Just wondering.

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There are a few good breweries but they are few and far between. Like colincbn said, Baird is real good, and their tap rooms are great. I also really like North Island and Otaru (both in Hokkaido, the northern island).

The scene is picking up quite a bit though; even some supermarkets are starting to carry small selections of craft beer. A convenience store chain, Natural Lawson, also has a few brands.

I just wish beers were as inexpensive as they are back in CA. A "normal" beer will run you over $2.50 EACH, with happoshu costing close to half. A Japanese craft brew costs about $5, and an imported craft beer like Green Flash or Stone costs $7.50. All ballpark figures. So for me, it is MUCH cheaper to home brew, even counting equipment costs!

What styles do the craft brewers make?

kwingert said:

What styles do the craft brewers make?

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I imagine pretty much everything that isn't too out there.

JiBiru8 said:

I imagine pretty much everything that isn't too out there.

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Yeah pretty much what JiBiru said.
I go to some of the 'Beerfests' each year and it seems that most, if not all, are just new interpretations of the standard styles. You get wheat beers, pilsners, pale ales, lagers, etc.
True, many of them do some interesting things with hop levels ,and fruit flavors, and things like that. But I imagine it is pretty similar to a craft beer event in the U.S. Except maybe more adjuncts and DME is being used than normal (because of the above mentioned law). But the flavor does not seem to be impaired as there is some really amazingly good stuff available.
I will say that the vast majority of craft breweries in Japan seem to be focusing a lot on German and Belgian beers though. You see a lot less English and American styles, though there are some stouts around.

FatherJack said:

http://www.amy.hi-ho.ne.jp/brew/

The guy's name is Aizawa (相&#28580, he's a good egg and runs a good shop.

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I am just getting into brewing and finding this site and your link is a great thing. Thanks for the link it will be a big help. One question for people that are bottling here in Japan. I am getting a brew kit from the US that comes with a bottle capper will that work for Japanese bottles? I want to use the 500ml and the 633ml.

I had a turnip beer at Tokyo's Great Japan Beerfest... they have some fruits here like yuzu that tend to get used on occasion that you probably wont see much of outside of Japan. Baird makes a kabocha ale (kind of a Japanese pumpkin) and one of the brewpubs in tokyo did a wild strain that i tried about a month ago... lots of variety but the staple beers for craft here are german styles for the most part. JiBiru, I went to that watering hole event, the owner of the bar is the japanese homebrewer who won that award and got the scolding! Its a small world brewing in japan! Back on topic, lots of conditioned bottles, might be a good way to get yeast strains that are not otherwise available. Someone on here or another site has an ongoing list of bottle yeast strains (what strains they are, or suspected to be) which would be useful if you go that way. You can order bottles online there are a few importers like Phred and Nagano trading that will be able to send bottles to remote towns. Also wouldn't hurt writing a nice email to a nearby brewery and straight up asking for some yeast! I found a cheap hop source that way!

OppamaBrendan said:

they have some fruits here like yuzu that tend to get used on occasion that you probably wont see much of outside of Japan.

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Man, I love yuzu. I think I'm gonna try making a yuzu pale ale next.

I'd like to get in touch with someone that home brews in oki. I'm on my way there soon...will be there for about 6 months. Email me using gmail...prefix that with jason613

Cheers

Sorry if Im wrong in assuming you mean Okinawa, going for 6 months Im also just assuming its US base-related travel? Not trying to be rude, I am just making assumptions. If so, you are in luck because there are a bunch of them down south there that get together and brew. They have a facebook page just for the okinawa home brewing peeps, it might be the easiest way to contact them. From what I can tell, they are pretty much self-contained in the sense that most of them have military addresses so Uncle Sam picks up the costs of shipping all their brew supplies from the US; they can get big supplies much cheaper than anyone else in Japan. I don't know of any non-military brewers down south but there must be some, and they would likely be using sakeland or advanced brewing for their supplies.
Cheers!