Tokyo: All hail Bairds ales (and lagers!)

[I've now added photos to the Kyoto posts and will add photos to this one tomorrow!]

When I last left the blog, I had nothing new to say about beer, and lots to say about monkeys.  This time, I promise there’s plenty o’ beer and (somewhat sadly) no monkeys.  If only I could have great beer and see great monkeys in the same day!  Note to beer garden proprietors…

We arrived in Tokyo in the Shinkansen (bullet train) from Kyoto on Friday evening.  We were staying in Roppongi, which as far as I can tell is expat and tourist central.  It was the only time we had any trouble finding our way (besides when we were momentarily confused on our way to Yoramu’s bar), but we found our way within about 15 minutes.

The hotel room was amazingly compact, yet comfortable, a completely practical application of all that Japanese engineering prowess.  And though their bathrooms do have drawbacks (I am incapable of taking a shower here without getting water over every wall, ceiling, and floor), I’m still in thrall of their high tech toilets, their array of free toiletry-type amenities at every hotel, and the awesome water pressure in the showers.

The Roppongi Hills complex is truly astounding.  It melds offices, restaurants, bars, hotels, store, and condos into a few giant towers.  Watching the people stream in and out, I’m convinced that the entirety of a medium sized US city (Cincinnati maybe?) could fit into one of them. 

We ate conveyor belt sushi and gasped when we saw the checkout mechanism.  The plates were each color-coded by price and at the end of the meal they came over with a bar code scanner-type device that scanned the colors of the plates and automatically calculated the cost of the entire meal.  They then popped out the memory card with the bill on it and handed it to us.  The only thing was, for all their high tech gadgetry, they forgot to charge both of the boys for their beers because they had cleared the glasses before they came to scan our plates.  I guess paying for my beer was the price I paid for drinking too slowly. 

The next day we packed up and went to drop our bags off at our next hotel in Shibuya.  This was a splurge night, not intentionally, but because we had forgotten to book a room until last minute.  We were staying in the Excel Hotel Tokyu in Shibuya, and we got a room on the 24^th floor with a panorama view of the city.  The air-con in the room was a life changing experience, considering that I just did some poking around online for Heat Index measures based on temperature and humidity.  Apparently, when it is 90 – 95° F and 70% – 94% humidity outside, it feels like it is 106 to 137° F.  137° F!  This might explain why we’ve noticed recently at the end of the day that our shirts are caked in all the salt we’ve sweated out.  We’re walking salt licks.  Good thing we’re not running into any more deer on this trip. 

It’s also a good thing that having soft drink vending machines everywhere is something the Japanese are very good at.  We saw 9 in a row lined up on a street tonight.  We’ve been avid patrons of the vendos.  Other things the Japanese are very good at include having public restrooms everywhere and being intensely friendly.  When we’re trying to ask a question at a store and the clerk can’t speak much English, other customers with better English skills will notice and cross the entire room to come offer translation.  We’re starting to wonder whether they are under national order to be as incredibly welcoming to foreigners as possible.  The only problem is this: having international ATMs available is not something the Japanese are good at.  All we want to do is give them yen and they’re just not making it easy for us. 

We took the train to Harajuku and wandered around Meiji-Jingu for a while.  A couple in traditional wedding costume was having their wedding photos taken there, and as a crowd of tourists including myself formed a circle around them and snapped photos, I couldn’t help but feel that I was in some alternate universe where all the roles are reversed.  It wasn’t too long ago that Japanese tourists would snap photos of me in me and my friends at college in our pajamas on the way to breakfast. 

We also headed over to Yebisu Garden Place, which is on the site of the old Ebisu brewery, now owned by Sapporo.  I’ve never thought a cold frosty mug of beer has been so welcome before, but then, I’m not sure I’ve ever spent 4 to 8 hours a day walking halfway across a city where the water immediately hisses into steam as the street cleaners spray down the pavement.  The Ebisu Beer Museum was disappointing.  It was just as hokey as Guinness or Heineken, but less informative.  After I made this comment out loud, Ben pointed out that it was probably less informative because everything was in Japanese and I don’t know any kanji.  True.  But, I was proud when I could sound out the kana for ‘hops’.  So, I mostly just walked around saying to Nick and Ben every 10 seconds, “Look! Hopusu!”

That evening we went to the Baird Taproom in Naka-Meguro.  The original brewery and taproom are in Numazu, so I was worried that this relatively new outpost of Baird Brewing wouldn’t measure up, but I was all wrong.  Amazing facts about the taproom:

• They had 17 Baird beers available!  I don’t know any other brewpub that makes that many different styles at one time. 
• They had 3 Baird beers, all traditional British styles, on hand pump.
• They were in the middle of their summer fruit beer festival, which included beers brewed with varieties of citrus that I didn’t even know existed before last night.

The food menu was pretty limited, mostly just appetizer type items.  I ordered the fish and chips, which seemed like the one actual entrée, and it was the best fried fish I’ve ever eaten. 

Between the three of us we were able to try almost all of them.  The only downsides were that they don’t offer a tasting platter and the beer is all pretty expensive (4 oz. tastes = ¥350 yen, half pint = ¥700, pint = ¥900, and a yen is about equal to one cent).  While Tokyo is expensive in general, it seems like a half pint of macrolager around here is generally ¥350 – ¥400, and a pint is about ¥550 – ¥650.  The spread between the macro and the craft seems larger here than in the US, where I can get a pint of just about anything domestic craft beer Toronado has for $4.00 – $5.50, and $3 if it’s a special night. 

Before jumping in to everything we tried, it’s worth mentioning a couple trends that seemed to apply to all of their beers.  Almost everything was low alcohol, with most in the 4% – 5% range.  When Nick tried to order one of the two beers that was over 6%, the waitress asked him if he was sure he really wanted an 8% beer.  I guess this is what their market wants.  In fact, as I looked around the taproom, a lot of the Japanese customers were drinking soft drinks, and it was mostly the expats (there were several tables of Germans and Brits) drinking the beer.

The beers were also generally relatively low hops.  I’m not sure if this has more to do with the Japanese palate or the hops shortage.  The beers almost universally tended to fall on the sweet side of whatever their style called for.  Most were still great beers, I don’t want to imply that they were too sweet, but for any given style they tended to be just a touch more sugary than I expected before taking a sip.

So here they are…

Summer Fruit Beer Festival

• Saison Sayuri: I started with this one since I love saisons.  This one is brewed with lots of wheat, sudaiko sugar, kinkan (kumquats), natsumikan (bitter tangerines), and fermented with a version of the Saison Dupont yeast.  It is 5.3% ABV.  The entirety of my first impression, was “whoa, that’s a lot of tangerine.”  It had a very distinct taste, and it was great to try something different from the grapefruity flavors of all the west coast hop beers, and the orange flavors of American or Belgian witbiers.  It was easy to tell that this one used something quite different.  That said, it also took me a while to taste what else this beer had going for it.  On my first few sips, I couldn’t cut through the citrus to the malt or spices.  After I came back to it from tasting other beers though, it tasted like a real saison.  It had a mild peppery aroma, some coriander and faint Noble hops in the taste, and a sweet wheat maltiness.  Still, the kumquat and tangerine are what define this beer.
• Summer Mikan Ale: They didn’t specify what type of ale this was, but it was basically a blonde ale plus fruits.  It was brewed with mikan, which are also called ‘honey citrus’ and are a specific type of mandarin oranges.  It is 5.5% ABV.  Baird described it as “aromatic, effervescent, dryly acidic, and refreshing.”  It was all of these things and when I first tasted it, right after the saison, I preferred it because it tasted more like beer to me than sparkling fruit juice.  It was amazing to see how different the mandarin oranges tasted from the kumquat and tangerines.  It really makes me start to wonder how useful “citrus” is as a descriptor.  Neither of these could be mistaken for each other, much less lime or grapefruit or bergamot.  It had effervescent, but not overdone, carbonation and a light grainy flavor.  It was a fantastic summer beer.
• Snow Storm Dark Strong ale: This one was brewed with strawberries and Belgian yeast, and was 8.0% ABV.  I have never tasted anything so strawberry-ish in my life before, except actual whole strawberries.  Before I go one to what all else I have to say about this beer, I have to state first that I think Baird deserves major credit for getting this flavor so strong and so pure, it is a major feat.  That said, it wasn’t my cup of tea, or beer rather.  The strawberries overpowered everything else, and the strong dark Belgian flavor was only noticeable for a half second upon the first sip and then slipped away. 

Handpump

• Fuggle Summer Ale: An English single-hop bitter, with 4.7% ABV.  This one wasn’t quite as malty as I expected.  The earthy Fuggle character was mild and apparent in the aroma and flavor.  I wanted a little bit more from it though, as there was little hop bitterness (IBU = 28), little mat flavor, and not much yeast complexity.
• 60- Scottish Ale: This was one of my favorites of the night.  I had never had a 60 Shilling Scottish Ale before, as most brewers who decide to do a Scottish will go the whole hog and brew a Wee Heavy.  Now, I don’t want to discourage this, since I love Wee Heavies, but this was the opposite end of the spectrum as far as Scottish ales are concerned, as light as they get, and it was delicious.  That said, I think this might have actually been more of a 70 Shilling, since the main distinction is the ABV, and a 60 Shilling is 2.5 – 3.2% ABV and this one was 3.8%, which falls right in the 3.2 – 3.9% range for a 70 Shilling Scottish Ale.  It did not have the peaty flavor I often look forward to in a Wee Heavy, but it did have some residual sweetness and a fantastic dark caramelization.  What I liked most was the contrast between the deep intense flavor and the light body. 
• Nakameguro Bitter: Not available, sold out.

Seasonal

• Rainy Season Black Ale: This was the best aroma of the night.  They described it as an “espresso like ale” and Nick said it tasted overwhelmingly like coffee to him both when he first tried it and when I asked him to try it again.  But it didn’t taste roasty to me at all.  I thought it tasted much more like a Belgian-style strong dark ale, with dark fruits like black cherry and raisin.  This was the one other “high” ABV beer, at 6.3%. 
• Kiss of Smoke Amber Lager: Along with the Scottish and the Black Ale, this one rounded out my top three.  It was a maerzen rauchbier.  The prominent caramel malt is what really made this beer special.  In several other rauchbiers I’ve had, the smoke and hops are all I can taste, and it’s like someone poured macrolager through a chimney before serving it (cough, cough, Gordon Biersch).  This one retained everything I love about maerzens (the assertive hop bitterness, the strong & complex malt backbone) and added just a slight smokey twist.  In fact, ‘balance’ is what Baird said they were going for in all of their beers on their menu and I think this one best exemplifies it.  I know breweries often say they look for balance in their beers, but this one made a big deal about it as part of the Japanese brewing tradition, and part of the legacy of Zen Buddhism, and they completely lived up to it.

Year-Round

• Nide Ale and Nide Lager: This was a pair of beers split from the same mash and then fermented with different yeasts.  The mash was from a cream ale recipe and produced a refreshing light gold colored beer.  I expected to prefer the ale by a wide margin, given that I almost always drink ales, and generally only get excited about lagers if they have something extra going on, like the Kiss of Smoke above.  But, I was shocked to realize that I definitely preferred the lager of these two.  It wasn’t boring at all.  Both the ale and the lager had a light fruity flavor, but the lager was much crisper and cleaner.  It was like looking at two pictures in which each has the same foreground, but one busy, disordered background and the other has a single calming pattern or color in the background.  And it wasn’t as the background tastes in the lager were lacking either, there were some sharp hop flavors and bitterness, but it was as though the whole beer were better integrated such that the background flavors made the foreground pop, instead of melding together into one big mess.  I’m so glad I tried these side-by-side, and it makes me want to start drinking more lagers.
• Red Rose Amber: This seems like one of their most popular year round beers, and for good reason.  It tastes dry like red ale at first, very crisp, hoppy, and quenching.  Then it swells with fruit and malt flavors into more of an amber ale.  I’m not sure if other people make the same distinction between these that I do, but I always think of a red as being dryer and an amber as being sweeter.  The fruitiness made me think of hibiscus. 
• Rising Sun Pale Ale: This was a great American-style pale ale that I think would rival Mirror Pond.  It had subtly citric hops, that didn’t overwhelm the beer as in some of the actual fruit beers.
• Wheat King Ale: Didn’t get to it.
•  Teikokan IPA: Didn’t get to it.
• Angry Boy Brown: Didn’t get to it.
• Kurofune Porter: Didn’t get to it.
• Shimaguri Stout: Didn’t get to it.

That’s it for now.  I’ll cover what we did today next time!  But now we’re going to sleep since we’re getting up early tomorrow to head to Hakone.  We’re also going to Beer Club Popeye tomorrow evening, which I expect may be the beer highlight of the trip!