Brewing with Friends - Yamorido
As we had first mentioned here, we did a collab brew in Nov with Yamorido. This collab is part of our “OB-series”. The idea was to catch-up and brew with people who were once on our brew team that have since left and are still working in the beer industry (either as an owner and/or brewer).
The series originally kicked-off with Nara Brewing (their beer, a Milk Stout, was released at the end of last month and a little bit is still available here). Yamorido is up this time.
（▲Source: Yamorido's HP）
Hiroko Iezumi, the head brewer, used to work for KBC a few years back. A native to Kyoto, before working at KBC, she was working at Yoho Brewing. Yamorido brewery is located in a beautiful area of Fushimi, Kyoto and the brewery build-out happened in a traditional Machiya building. It was once a tea selling business and they’ve kept that tradition alive by still selling tea in their shop + making beers with a variety of different teas
When we went to visit Yamorido in order to talk about what possible beers to brew, Hiroko had poured us a cup of fresh Kyobancha. It was such a delight that James, KBC’s head brewer, was so enthralled with the tea, he asked everyone what we thought if we tried to brew a beer with those tea leaves.
As an aside, this was somewhat serendipitous as only a few weeks before, James had been telling us how much he wanted to brew some beers with tea as a feature ingredient as it is not something that happens very often in America and given that Japan is rife with high grade tea, it seems like a waste not to take advantage of the idea.
However, we told James that we actually brewed a beer with Kyobancha before. It was in a Helles (Iburi for those that remember). We told him that in that instance, the tobacco-like character of the tea was almost overpowering and what surprised us as well was that when the tea was added to the beer, it became quite a bit more acidic (ie. the pH dropped). James' idea was to counteract the heavy-handed character of the Kyobancha with the high ABV and burly full body of an English Barley Wine. Additional counterweight towards balance came in the form of some residual sweetness in the product.
In Nov, the 3-member Yamorido brew team came over to KBC and we kicked off the brew. The great thing about this brew was the continuous addition/removal of Kyobancha tea leaves throughout the brew. Each time the leaves were added, the smokey, tobacco-like, character permeated throughout the building. When putting a name to this beer, we thought back to that and aptly called the beer Kitsunebi (fox fire).
Just a heads-up that Yamorido’s side of the beer was brewed this past week. It’ll be ready for release in January. When it becomes available, we’ll make sure to tell you guys about it.
In the next weeks, we'll be introducing our colaboration with Yellow Ape brewing.
