Men's Health - Movember 2024

Last month, throughout the entirety of November, every single person that could grow a moustache at KBC grew one.

In Japan, growing out your facial hair is somewhat of a rarity and so having all the guys in the company grow a moustache was quite a sight to behold.

So why did we do it?

• The short answer was: “to participate in Movember”

Movember? What is that?

• In 2003, 2 Australian friends got together over a beer to exchange ideas on how to raise money / awareness for Mens health; specifically prostate cancer, and testicular cancer, mental health and suicide prevention
• They decided to focus on the moustache as a symbol of the movement as moustaches had disappeared from fashion trends
• 30 men initially participated to ‘start a conversation’
• The following year (2004), 480 gentlemen (plus their supporters) raised $54K AUD (約540万円) and 6 projects centering around mens health were funded
• As of 2022, 6.9million participants have raised money to help fund 1250 men’s health projects across 20 countries

What about Japan’s connection?

• It is said that 1 in 7 men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer at some point in their life. 1 in 263 for testicular cancer.
• In Canada it is the third leading cause of death from cancer for men.
• Japan has also seen a surge in prostate cancer over the past decade.
• Raising awareness is important: here

What is KBC’s connection to it?

• Kai, a founder at Flora Fermentation, a brewery located in Shiga, was working at KBC last Oct (Oct 2023) while he was waiting for his brewery to get off the ground
• Having come from Canada, he worked at a brewery over there that participated in Movember and he thought it would be great if all the guys could grow a moustache (truth be told, we think he was more focused on how we would look with moustaches than anything else >.>)



• Jokes aside, we decided to participate in Movember 2023 and almost all of the boys at KBC participated
• After a successful campaign in 2023, we thought we would try to repeat and build upon what we did for 2024

How did we raise the money?

• Throughout November, we had a donation box in our taproom and KBC decided to match the contribution by our patrons
• Furthermore, similar to 2023, we decided to take all the proceeds from a beer from a beer and have it contribute to the donation
• However, this year, we decided to combine forces with Two Rabbits (they have been making Movember beers now for 3 times now) and make a collab brew at both places

what did we release?

• The idea was to focus on a region of the world where the beer styles don't really show up in Japan
• We focused on the Baltic region and Sean from Two Rabbits decided to take the mantle of brewing a Sahti as Two Rabbits has a connection to Finland.
• On KBC's side, we decided to brew a Baltic Porter
• The end result can be found here

How much did we raise?

• In the end, alongside Two Rabbits, we raised 135,500JPY for this year's campaign

KBC’s charity

• Our proceeds, similar to last year, will be donated to: Mo Festa Cancer Forum  (introduced to us via Two Rabbits)

…and now, in a moment of lightness, some photos from November

Before

After