In January of this year, we published a blog article on updates we made to our Core “Teiban” Series (Past ariticle "Teiban Refresh"). This was our first significant update to our series in a long time, with significant improvements being made, and so we updated our designs as well to reflect this.

Among the changes, one significant shift was to turn Ichigo Ichie, our flagship saison and our first year-round release, into a product secondary fermented in the can. One of the long-term goals of this was to make the beer a product suitable for room temperature distribution, as well as further cellar maturation. Most craft beer requires refrigeration, at least when not cutting corners, and so we felt that this decision, and the reasons behind it, merited more in depth background and explanation.

Before getting too far into it, since Ichigo Ichie has always been a KBC flagship that we rarely revisit, we wanted to just talk about it a little.

Our first “teiban” product:a saison
When we founded our company, the first beer that we decided we would make, and the first that we wanted to have as a year-round product, was a saison. Light in body and crispy dry, refreshing yet infinitely more characterful than what people dub “standard beer”, this was a beer style that we felt we could drink all day, and yet you couldn’t get it in many beer bars or stores in Japan.

While we have made many beers blending traditional Belgian styles with American hops, and have since gone on to make many more diverse beer styles, influenced by all sorts of beer cultures, Ichigo Ichie stands as a beer embodying our philosophy of beer production on many levels.

While one of our less flashy beers, Ichigo Ichie’s appeal lies in its balance, and its versatility with food. Never overly hoppy, and not relying on adjuncts for character, it’s a beer that truly showcases the fruitiness, and mild herbal and spice tones from our Belgian house yeast. Complimented by its restrained yet mildly bready malt character, the fruity esters combines seamlessly with the more modern and fruitier hop tones that remain light and subtle, creating a natural harmony where one struggles to pinpoint which comes from the yeast, and which from the hops.

Ichigo Ichie’s dryness also makes it an excellent fit for a wide range of foods, and we enjoy it with seafood – especially when barbequed or grilled – herb or spice infused chicken and pork dishes, as well as fried foods.

Making Ichigo Ichie even more authentic
 To take this beer to the next level, we identified one other key element, which was to adopt the traditional Belgian method of secondary fermentation within the package. This is typical of all traditional Belgian breweries, not least classic saisons like Saison Dupont. This method allows natural carbonation to develop, which not only offers a subtly different quality, but also allows much higher carbonation to occur than many canning machines can stably handle. Strong carbonation is one of the saison’s true hallmarks (although the bain of many a keg beer server!), and so this was something we wanted to bring to our saison as well.

Secondary fermentation is something we have discussed a number of times, not least for our “Rediscovery” series – a series exploring classic styles but with a Japanese twist – and in our Kyoto limited Witbier, Habakarisan, brewed with a touch of yuzu and sansho pepper. Allow us to share again what this is about.

In contrast to modern standard practice of forced carbonation, where carbon dioxide is forced into the beer to provide fizz, secondary fermentation involves adding yeast and sugar to the beer after primary fermentation, allowing it to ferment again within the container to produce natural carbonation. This is standard in all champagne, and also practiced worldwide in a number of traditional beer cultures, with Belgium being a notable example.

While it adds a couple of weeks onto production, and takes effort and costs, it also adds a couple of significant advantages;

1. Allowing evolution and development of flavour
Secondary fermentation in the container consumes the dissolved oxygen within the beer, reducing it to very low levels, lower than is typically feasible for force carbonated beer. Much like champagne, it allows the beer to mature over time in a positive way rather than simply having negative impact from oxidation.

2. Enhanced shelf stability
Secondary fermentation also makes changes within the beer happen much slower, and therefore makes it much more stable, even without heat pasteurisation. Heat pasteurisation is common in mass produced beer, but a debated topic within craft beer, as it is often, despite making the beer’s flavour change less after pasteurisation, is considered to detract from the quality. In other words, many feel it makes the product poorer to begin with, but from there on it changes very little and maintains consistency. Secondary fermentation does not change the flavour in the same way, however, and many believe, at least for certain styles of beer, it actually enhances the flavour. Mass produced brewers typically consider it to be expensive and inefficient, but this is why for us it is a fine example of what makes something craft.

So why don’t we do it on all our beers?
 Well, the method is great for many types of beers, but we are still yet to be convinced that it is the right technique for intensely hoppy modern-style beers. Hops react quickly to the oxygen, and this can be the case in the early stages of secondary fermentation, before the yeast consumes the oxygen. This is something we have not tested extensively, and so it remains to be proven to us, but we are yet to experience very hoppy beers refermented in package that have maintained the bright freshness of force carbonated fresh hoppy beers.

After switching our beloved Ichigo Ichie to a secondary fermented product, and refreshing the recipe to suit it better, we used our lab to meticulously test the beer, and also did more practical taste testing, leaving cans of beer in horrifically bad warm conditions, to see how much it can changed if really abused. We were amazed at how well it held up, and were relieved to see the results backed up our theory that the lower dissolved oxygen made the beer very strong to age. We also found that changes weren’t all negative, and this was a sign of positive flavour change due to maturation.

While major manufacturers naturally shy from inconsistency or flavour changes, we saw this as a strength of being a small craft brewery that we can undertake such a shift in how we make beer, and embrace change.

This also is an opportunity, in our mind, for allowing this beer to become a gateway. While America’s beer is now almost 25% craft, Japan sits somewhere between 2% and 3% of all beer consumption. One major bottleneck is the reluctance of retailers to attempt to sell refrigerated beer. Between the high price, limited fridge space and increased cost of distribution and handling, this has been a common barrier to the growth of the industry, and therefore a limitation in how many people get exposed to craft beer. We hope that Ichigo Ichie being open to room temp distribution will allow more distributors and retailers to roll the dice with it and, if they find it resonates with their customer base, perhaps they will take the leap to try a few refrigerated products along with it.

So why does my can now say “happoshu”?
Happoshu is something fairly unique to Japan. Its origins start more in Japanese beer law, which is loosely based on the German beer purity laws, and therefore beer that wasn’t 100% malt, or beer that included adjuncts, would therefore not be categorised as “beer”. With it in the past having a cheaper tax rate, it naturally got seen as “cheap beer”, with the goal of being affordable whilst tasting close enough.

The laws for happoshu keep changing, but one challenge we have come up against is the fact that Japanese beer rules are closer to German rules rather than American, British, or Belgian. This means that adding anything post-fermentation immediately qualifies it as happoshu rather than beer, even if it is 100% or almost 100% malt. And this includes the yeast and priming sugar needed for refermentation.

We will probably, at some point, write in a little more depth about the implications of the government’s rulings, and the paradoxes it creates, but for now hopefully this helps you understand why Ichigo Ichie is no longer considered to be “beer”.

While the changes to Ichigo Ichie happened at the start of the year, we wanted to have a certain amount of time to age some cans, abuse some of them more, and have some proper tastings in addition to the testing in the lab we have had built.

Having confirmed our own confidence in the product, we will be selling the relabelled version with “cool, dark storage recommended” written instead of the refrigerated requirement. If you have some cans of the “refrigerated” version that you picked up recently, feel free to treat those the same as the product itself has not changed. and feel free to put a few in a wine cellar, should you have one, to see how you like it a few months from now as opposed to fresh!