I see all of the statistics that tell me that beer is the most popular alcoholic drink in Japan. I hear and read that beer is more popular than sake and shochu and all of the other things to choose from out there. Still, I have a hard time believing it.
I know many who read this blog are in the Tokyo area and have good access to great beer. There are several microbreweries and great liquor stores in the Tokyo area that are making and selling great beer. There is demand in Tokyo for good beer, and the market provides. It stands to reason that one of the biggest cities in the world should have a pretty good beer selection to choose from.
I'm from a small town in KY that boasts around a modest 20,000 people. It's a town that just made the transition from 'dry' to 'moist' a few years ago, and just legalized the sale of alcohol on Sundays last week. You can not buy any alcohol at a supermarket or a package store anywhere in the county.
All of these things considered, we still have a bar right next to my apartment in KY that has 14 beers on tap and around 30 in bottles. The bar has local brews, macro brews, and obscure brews from across the globe. Most every Friday and Saturday night, the bar is packed with beer drinkers. This bar is the one with the most beers, but certainly there are about 4 or 5 other restaurants that have at least 4 or 5 beers on tap in town. Remember, this is a town in KY that only has about 20,000 people. Make the 20 minute drive to Lexington and you can visit Pazzo's, which boasts 40 beers on tap and is one of Lexington's great places to drink good beer.
The city of Nagoya has a population of around 2.5 million people. The Chūkyō Metropolitan Area which surrounds Nagoya proper has about 9 million people. NINE MILLION PEOPLE.
To my knowledge, the bar with the most beers on tap in Nagoya is London Pub Towser, which has 12. They do make good use of their 12 taps and have various real ales and other beers mainly from microbreweries in Japan. The place is pricey, but it has the best beer in Nagoya and I must return for a second trip.
The place with the next most beers on tap is Belgian Beer Bar Lambic which has 10 Belgian beers. This place is tied to Towser, but I have not been there yet to give it a first hand review. Sounds like a field trip. After this there is Beer Circus, LandBeer's tap room and restaurtant that I highly reccomned. They usually keep 4 or 5 of their beers on tap, and is the only place that I know of to get draught Kinshachi Beer.
After these two, you drop to places that have one or two beers, mostly run of the mill stuff that isn't too awe inspring. (If you know of more, LET ME KNOW!)
So why is it, that a town the size of Georgetown, KY can have a bar with more beers on tap than one of the top 50 most populated places on the planet? I don't buy the argument for one second that there are more good beer drinkers in Georgetown than in Nagoya. I also don't buy it that a bar with a lot of beers on tap would flop if it was placed in a good location in Nagoya. Is it the liquor laws or restrictions? Would having many beers on tap require a super expensive system here that I don't know about? Do the majority of Japanese people just not know that there is a whole other beer world out there besides the Big 4? (There is also a lack of liquor stores that sell a decent selection of good beers both from Japan and the rest of the world....)
How is that such a huge town can have such a void in this area?
11 comments:
DH blogged:
[big edit]
> So why is it, that a town the size of
> Georgetown, KY can have a bar with more
> beers on tap than one of the top 50
> most populated places on the planet?
> I don't buy the argument for one
> second that there are more good beer
> drinkers in Georgetown than in Nagoya.
> I also don't buy it that a bar with a
> lot of beers on tap would flop if it
> was placed in a good location in Nagoya.
> Is it the liquor laws or restrictions?
You hit it with ^this last sentence^.
I doubt things have changed that substantially since then, but, back on New Year's Day 1990, I, and two of my indoor soccer friends were en route from Memphis, TN. to Dayton, OH.
We broke the trip that night in Bowling Green, KY.
We went into a liquor store on US 231 and our jaws dropped.
So many brands - running the spectrum from el sleazo megabrews (Olympia?!) to then-new craft beers like the Bohannon beers from Tennessee.
Prices were amazingly cheap. Even cheaper than Milwaukee (and all of Wisconsin).
We got the terse explanation from the store proprietor. Since so much of Kentucky is dry, the state did not impose a high amount of taxes on licensed beverages.
[We bought a lot of beers. Most of it came back to Chicago. ;) ]
The tax structure in Japan encourages happoshu brews. And since those sell a lot, and make a lot of profits for the meagbrewers, they want to keep brewing them. But they have noticed that a growing segment of the population is experimenting and purchasing beers with malt and hops. {!}
So they are giving their brewers a little more slack in their collars and letting them brew what I would consider 'bridge' beers.
What craft beer in Japan has to hope this will accomplish is that the megabrew drinker will have a few of these bridge beers and decide that he can tolerate them. And maybe he should try a small brewer's craft beer. So he will request it.
That will give the craft beer movement there the momentum it needs which should culminate in a pub in Nagoya offering a solid list of craft beers, and being profitable.
Good words Pudgy. How's the soccer world these days?
You are right about KY, except this year a bill is in the works (hasn't passed yet I think) to finally levy sales tax on booze in KY, 6%. Still, we can get it pretty cheap, and most of Kentucky remains Dry, or moist.
Do you get the feeling that Japan is on the verge of a craft beer explosion?
Three reasons.
1. Tax. Beer taxes are ridiculously high. I have actually heard that happoshu has a lower profit margin than all-malt beer: it is much costlier to get the mix right and deal with different kinds of grains. the breweries actually make more money for each all-malt they can sell. The problem is, as you all know, that the real beers get taxed up the bunghole, so few people want to buy them.
2. The high level of equipment needed to get a license, and the nonsense involved in the licensing process. To make and sell your own beer, you have to be able to produce 60,000 liters a year. Then you have to probably bribe someone to say that you actually can.
3. The big four have something like a monopoly on restaurants and distributors, especially chain stores. And they give all kinds of free crap like taps, refrigerators, etc, to keep stores coming back.
If you want cheap and available in Japan, so with whiskey. It is usually cheaper than the country it is made in, because it is taxed so lightly here. The government may seem evil to us beer lovers, but it is pretty smart on this one. People drink lots of the fizzy, so they tax it up the wazoo and make lots of cash...
Mark
Mark, are you suggesting that a country like Japan has a lot of red tape?????? I can't believe it!
You are right. These KY boys love their bourbon, and here in Japan a fifth of Blanton's sells for about $25-$30 bucks cheaper than in KY where it is made. I think at the moment Nate has about 10 different fifths of bourbon in his apt. I had some, but the stuff has a habit of disappearing up here...
To continue,
I don't see any craft beer explosion. I see it growing steadily, but also becoming more expensive and elitist, like wine is in Japan. The craft brewers are not aiming their products at Good Beer Country Boys, they are aiming at Gourmand Brand-loving City Girls. (Thus all the chocolate beers, too.) Look at the Grande Biere crap and you will see what I mean. Tokyo Midtown? About as far away form the local pub as I can imagine.
Mark
When my buddy goes home to Ireland, he always buys as much 18 Year Jameson as he can carry, since it is like 1/2 the price it is in Ireland!
Mark, you make some great points. I'll talk about this more in a post tomorrow, but we are going to volunteer to work the Grande Biere festival in Midtown. There's not one reason that we are going, there is 5500 of them if you catch my drift.
Nate and his girl were both invited to the planning meeting for the festival that was made up of the "head planner" and all girls--since that's what this festival is for: To make beer more glamorous.
Like my daddy always said, "Son, you just can't make a silk purse out of sow's ear."
And the older I get, the more I realize he was right, and the more I realize that you shouldn't even try. More to come on that tomorrow.
I love bourbon!
Well, you guys, I sure do wish I was going with you to Tokyo this weekend. I mean, I don't have to agree with the venue to drink up the brew! It's a little too far for me this time, though. Please fill me in on what it's like, and I do want to hear the rest of your thoughts, DH.
I heard the guy in charge of that gig drives around in a Ferrari that he bought with "Ji-beer" club money!
Mark
Well.....we have heard the same rumors and admit that Ferrari's and beer don't mix--any way you stack em.....
Mark, come along and while we drink the beer we can discuss new ways to market jibeer!!!!!
I will write more tomorrow!
Wish I could come this weekend, Boys, but I can't get away. We'll have to drink together some other time soon, DH.
Another thought for you to ponder in your response... When I go home to Upstate NY, I also go to a bar with 65 taps, in a suburb of Rochester with a population of about 25,000. Now, I certainly dig the opportunity to try all these beers for about $4 a pop. But... there is a certain Walmart-esque quality to this as well, and it bothers me a little. It is very consumerist. It seems related to "American Fast-food culture" to have this kind of massive selection (although it happens in Belgium as well). The best place I ever drank in my life had 3 beers on tap and one more in the bottle. Of course, the pub was around 500 years old and the beers made right there--it was Spezial, in Bamberg, Germany--but there was no need for any more than they had.
Now, when I go to my favorite Izakaya after work, I am really bummed out that they have only Asahi Super Dry and Kuro Nama. At least they have the dark! I'm not saying I prefer that. But does anyone really need 65 beers to choose from?
Maybe I'm taking the discussion in a direction that complicates things too much--been drinking wine tonight, which I also love and which is fairly reasonable here--but the issues of how many taps and the issue of having an affordable selection of good beers to choose from may not be the same thing. I often drink at Q-brick in Osaka, where are are 6 taps. 2-3 are guest beers, continually rotating, ¥900 for an American pint. That's enough. (OK, I forgot, he does have something like 200 bottled beers in the frig, but I usually only drink draught)
Goodnight,
Mark
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