Happy hunting.

There’s definitely a good choice of good quality craft beer available in Japan, but it’s getting more and more expensive. One jsut has to ask if alcohol is the b all and end all. If so, then happoshu is here to stay. Personally, I choose taste, flavor and principles – but a bit of alcohol doesn’t hurt, either.

As for buying beer in the store, I recommend Tanakaya at Mejiro. Best selection in Japan, I reckon. Also Sugaya, near Kajigaya station (well, 2km).

YonaYona is possibly the best value for money beer on the market. 260 yen a can and tastes damn good too. Also, it’s a significant brew, as the guy from Yaho brewing was one of the few who kickstarted the real ale boom that is sweeping the craft beer scene. Yonayona is one of their first and I do like almost everything that Yaho brewing creates.
The Ginga Kogen weissen and wheat beer is also not bad (but stay away from their pale ale).

That chocolate ‘beer’ ranks up there with the likes of the ‘space’ beer, made with some ingredients that spent time in space. So that makes it space beer? The company boss’s comments on that beer were also priceless. It showed that he had absolutley no idea of what beer was.

To add to what Pettis said: with the exception of Asahi’s Premium beers, the dividing line between regular beer (Asahi Super Dry, Kirin Lager, Kirin Ichiban-shibori, Sapporo Black Label, etc.) and premium beers (Yebisu in all its varieties, Suntory Premium Malt’s, etc.) seems to be ingredients. With the exception of Suntory Malt’s, the regular beers are made from a combination of wheat, rice, and corn starch, with the corn starch being the ingredient that smacks of going for the cheapest possible ingredients. Malt’s and the Premiums (other than Asahi’s) are made with wheat, hops, and water. I doubt they’re sticking to the Bavarian Reinheitsgebot on the Premiums, but at least it’s not beer made in the manner of soda-pop.

Adamu, isn’t Sparkling Hop a third-type?

I love the can-listing of some third types as その他の酒. Why even bother to explain what the swill is?

If it makes you feel any better, Adamu, Kirin, as part of its “chilled beer” line, which includes Premium 無濾過 – the finest mass-produced beer available from any of the Big 4, recently released (or re-released, I’m not sure) a Chocolate beer. Not great, but not awful.

Year by year, the number of domestic microbrews available in liquor stores and department stores increases, and there are some really good ones being made. As mentioned above, Popeye in Ryogoku is a great place to sample offerings from around the country. Even better, it’s within walking distance of a run-down izakaya in Asakusa-bashi, whose name escapes me, where the price for a chu-joki of Sapporo recently climbed from 50 to 100 yen. Big, huge place. Cheap, bad food, too.

Premium Malts is the hoppiest and my personal choice, although recently I’ve been going with the Meiji Lager or, as mentioned above, Yona Yona Pale Ale – I just wonder how long my AM PM will continue to stock it.

This leads to a point of clarification—Suntory Malt’s is the only “regular” Japanese real beer that is all malt. Kirin Ichiban Shibori, Asahi Super Dry, and Sapporo (Black Label) all make us of adjunct ingredients, typically rice, corn, or a combination of the two. Using these adjuncts makes the beer cheaper to produce since barley malt is more expensive. (I was happy to hear that Kirin is launching a “new” Ichiban Shibori this spring that will be 100% malt.) It’s only when you move up to the “premium” real beers that all malt becomes the standard—Suntory Premium Malts; Kirin’s The Gold, Nippon Premium, and Heartland; Asahi Prime Time; and the Ebisu series from Sapporo.