Tateshina Grand Hotel's relabeled Suwa Roman Beer

Miyuki's dad works on big ships all over Japan. He supervises maintenance work and this has him visiting different parts of Japan every week. Recently he brought back some Takinoyu Tateshina Roman Beer (the first bottle). It is 'specially' labeled for the Tateshina Grand Hotel in Tateshina, Nagano. The Reijin Shuzo Company, which has been making sake for 200 years, brews this beer and normally sells it as Suwa Roman Beer (the second bottle), but it gets a facelift (and probably a price up) when it goes through Tateshina Grand's marketing department. Also, the 'Roman' part of the beer name has nothing to do with Centurions and persecuting Jews, this is Japan! It is short for 'romantic', of course.

We drank the Kolsch and the Rindou beer. Suwa makes many more beers (I believe I have drank a Suwa smoked beer before) but these are the only two brews that are also sold through the hotel. I am not exactly sure what Rindou is. It's probably not spelled Rindou either, that is just how it translate into English letters. I thought it meant Lind and that it was some sort of fruit or nut but, according to Wikipedia, Lind is a city in Washington state. Either way, it doesn't give the beer any crazy flavor to make it taste like it's not beer, so no harm, no foul.

I drank this beer back in the summer as Suwa Roman Beer and remember not being that impressed with it. This time around it was pretty good. The beer has a wholesome rounded taste that is a bit fruity. This, plus the dark, almost ruby color had me thinking a Rindou must be something like a grape. This is a good beer. Not great, but good. The Kolsch is pretty damn good for a Kolsch. I am not the biggest fan of Kolsch. It always has to ride bitch when all the German beers carpool. But this one packs some tastes and hoppy flavor into the light German beer that it is. I will definitely drink it again. Well, the Rindou too for that matter. Miyuki's dad bought us three of each.

While Miyuki and I drank this beer last night, we also ate OH!LA!HO Bi-Ru Kure-, or beer curry. OH!LA!HO is another microbrewery in Nagano that makes decent beer, though we have yet to review it on this site. Miyuki's neighbor brought this curry back for us a few weeks ago. Each box has 3 of the ready-to-go packets that you submerge in boiling water. I expected great things from it. The box reads "This taste already belongs to the gourmet's world. I am sorry to have trespassed their territory." Gourmet? Trespassed? These are big words and this is good curry, but not great. I couldn't really taste the beer that was susposed to be in it and I don't want to know how much this box cost. My advice, buy some regular curry and dump your favorite beer in it.