Series (mini) Intro: Gochiai 'Locality'

2020 was a tumultuous year for all of us, and as we have been posting on our blog, we have begun to make many changes for KBC in 2021. One of these changes will be putting a renewed focus on the city that we call home and that has supported us since our inception. While we always felt a strong connection with the city, upon personal reflection we felt that we have not until now done enough to outwardly show our appreciation or actively contribute to the city and its people. Thus, in 2021 we will be releasing several beers in a new Locality Series that puts the spotlight on people and organizations that value their location here as much as we do.

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More details regarding the series will follow in a few weeks, but for now we are excited to announce that the first installment has now been brewed. While we could have started the series with a wide variety of partners in the city, we wanted to focus on one group of people who supported us more than any other: our jyosetsu (permanent tap) customers. Similar to how we felt that our efforts up until now were insufficient in showing our appreciation for Kyoto, we also feel that we need to do more to show how much we value the establishments that have committed to always having at least one of our beers on tap. Thus, we worked with our compatriots here in Kyoto to craft a beer together in a new and unique way: voting between participants to determine the style, yeast strain, ABV, IBU, hop character, and overall perception of the finished product.

The result is a challenging concept: a modern interpretation of a Saison/IPA hybrid beer that shows a citrus forward hop character without being overly bitter. Fermentation is under way, so we look forward to sharing more information regarding this important first step in showing our love of our city and our permanent tap bars and restaurants in the near future!