Tag Archives: Japanese beer

June 20

Taste Test: The Skinny On No-Alcohol Japanese Beers

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You can tell it’s summertime in Japan, because your clothes stick to you the instant you walk outdoors and the entire populace flees to the rooftop beer gardens of Tokyo as soon as the sun dips below the yardarm. But if your liver is crying out for mercy after last night’s company drink-a-thon, and you’re queasily contemplating how to avoid pickling it any further, […]

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July 08

Beer Sandwich

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Brewskie on a bun! At first glance, this latest candidate for Strange Sandwiches Of Japan promises to deliver the punch of a nice cold one, but on closer examination, there’s an unfortunate amount of beef curry diluting the beer. Dang. • Read a novel set in Tokyo

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April 05

So, What DO Cherry Blossoms Taste Like?

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Around cherry blossom season in Japan, the shelves suddenly fill with “sakura”-flavored food. But what does cherry blossom-flavored food actually taste like? I investigate. *Edited, thanks to Little Alex, whose comment below quite rightly pointed out that I had been utterly fooled into buying these unseasonal PLUM FLOWER sprinkled chips. Thinking that because they were still […]

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February 27

Beer Engineering

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Three to seven. That’s the ideal ratio of foamy head to actual beer, according to the experts at the Ebisu Brewery. And how do you achieve this perfect glass of brewski? Well, first, you have to be drinking Ebisu, which is engineered to deliver that perfect ratio, every time. But if you’re a bartender drawing up […]

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May 07

Beer Terminal!

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Recently my train line – the Toyoko-sen – was tragically re-routed through Shibuya station to make way for five long years of renovation on the circling-the-drain Tokyu Department Store. The transfer from the Toyoko line to any other remotely useful train line has become so arduous, I wouldn’t be surprised if someone was inspired to […]

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March 26

Coffee + Beer. No. Just…no.

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If anyone ever said to me, “Wow, you two go together like coffee and beer!” I think I’d start dusting off my OK Cupid profile. And it doesn’t stop there. This ad suggests other unlikely combos as well. Pineapple juice beer! Lychee beer! Grapefruit beer! And apparently it’s key to serve these new taste treats […]

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February 01

From Sixteen Nearly-Extinct Barley Seeds…

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Only in Japan would a guy bent on coming up with a new brewskie start by requesting sixteen seeds of a nearly annihilated strain of barley from the Department of Agricultural History, then spend years cultivating his little two-foot-square patch of grain into a crop big enough to malt for production! After-work company drinking parties […]

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