Author: JBT Staff

From learning shamisen while a bomb-squad member, to English teacher then brewery founder, Gareth Burns’ life story is an interesting one. This short documentary, produced by the Japan Beer Times, gives us a peek into Burns’ past, his thoughts on life, and his relationship with Aomori.

Jonathan Newman is the Brewmaster at The Virginia Beer Company in Williamsburg, VA (imported to Japan by Cardinal Trading). He’s been brewing professionally in a number of breweries since 2011 and completed the American Brewers Guild Diploma for Intensive Brewing Science and Engineering in 2013. Twenty years ago, I spent a couple of months “studying” in Oxford, England during the summer after my sophomore year in college. Don’t get me wrong, I’d consumed plenty of cheap beer and more than my fair share of six packs of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale at that point in my life, but when I…

By Anne Abrahamson, who was a graduate of Yokohama International School before attending the University of California, Berkeley. She has worked at several breweries since, and is currently the Director of Operations at Cerebral Brewing in Colorado. Dark beer was my gateway to craft beer. Although styles like “stout” and “porter” sounded more intimidating than “pale ale”, that first exploratory sip yielded familiar flavors I already loved. After all, what’s not to like about a beer that evokes memories of creamy espresso, chocolate cake, and dark fruit? On moving to Northern California from Yokohama and learning to brew, I soon…

By Wes Lashley (Brewer at Fukuoka Craft) About sixteen years ago, I had my very first American IPA at a local craft beer-focused watering hole near my apartment in Seattle. I was new to Seattle and craft beer. The first few sips of the beer were not what I was expecting. My untrained palate thought the beer tasted terrible, like nickels. I hated it. But I didn’t let that deter me from craft beer. Slowly, after more visits and more beers, I started to enjoy craft beer. But wait, I’m getting way ahead of myself. This article is about the…

By Alex Tweet, cofounder and head brewer of Fieldwork Brewing Co. in Berkeley, California. Fieldwork was featured in JBT31. As the global craft beer movement has hit fever pitch, spawning new trends and styles that shift with the wind, it can be rather daunting for a newcomer to understand not just what they are drinking, but more importantly, whether it is even beer. The demand for modern-day brewers to produce whimsical beers can be irritating to most older brewers who came of age in an era before the term “craft” was synonymous with any and all beer that was not…

By Tom Ainsworth. Australian Ainsworth is the cofounder and head brewer at Kyoto Beer Lab, hereafter KBL; see feature in JBT35. How many times have you been on the hunt for a beer, throat as dry as a dead dingo’s donger, covered in sweat as the sun beats down on you, following the directions of Google Maps, your personal pied piper to the nearest watering hole? As you sit down to order a refreshing pint, you are passed a menu with DDHTIPAs, milkshake monstrosities, double fruited vanilla infused POP sours, and an imperial stout darker than the river of Hades.…

By Lars Marius Garshol Among the first things you learn as a brewer is that to make beer you must go through three steps: mashing the malt to make wort, boiling the wort, then fermenting it. You can imagine my surprise the first time I heard that some farmhouse brewers don’t boil the wort. That is, they make what’s called raw ale. What you’re told as a brewer is that it’s necessary to boil the wort in order to kill the bacteria in it, since otherwise the beer will go sour. Now, I first heard about this a long time…

By Chris Macomber, the Head Brewer at Libushi Bashamichi (part of Anglo-Japanese Brewing) in Yokohama. Growing up in Oregon was great for a number of reasons–lots of good people, easy access to a wide variety of outdoor activities, and a strong sense of community are just a few. As I got older all the great beer produced in Oregon was another aspect that has greatly influenced me throughout my life, inspiring me to become a professional brewer myself. By the time I turned 21 I had moved to Portland from my hometown of Salem, Oregon. Even in the mid-1990s we…

by Lars Marius Garshol  Saisons used to stand out as this odd style of beer that wasn’t actually made in a brewery, but was instead made by farmers for enjoyment on the farm. Over the last few years it has started to sink in that saisons are just the tip of the iceberg. People realized, for example, that Finnish sahti and Swedish gotlandsdricke are also farmhouse ales. Which is odd. How much does the Finnish countryside, a Swedish island in the Baltic, and western Belgium have in common? Not much beyond farmhouse brewing turns out to be the answer. This…