Teiban Refresh

Teiban Refresh 4 years ago, which in itself was roughly 5 years from when we had originally released our year-round, or ”Teiban” beers, we switched to can and simultaneously refreshed and renewed our lineup. We stuck to the same 3 beers, but updated the recipes with what we felt was more in line with how we felt they should taste. They were changes made to represent our improvements as a brewery, and our ability to make beers better than before, and also to reflect how we felt our beers should be. We shared it in a blog (see blog), and essentially explained why we were making our Ichigo Ichie a little lighter and more reliant on yeast than hops, why we wanted to make Ichii Senshin punchier, and why we felt that Kuroshio needed more body.

4 years on, and this last year has seen a LOT of change to our brew program. The biggest shift since we started making beer in 2015. With our overhaul, our new head brewer, our new look, and approaching our 10-year anniversary, we felt it time again to look back at our Teiban beers and refresh them.

Our goal is not to drop our identity in favour of another, but we have had to make difficult decisions. Not least was our choice last year of dropping Kuroshio no Gotoku, our year-round stout. That one hurt in that we liked that beer and we liked having a stout always available. But the reality was that, unlike 6 Day Weekend and Ichigo Ichie, it wasn’t growing, and its existence wasn't helping the performance of limited release stouts. As a result, we decided we would play around with a wider range of stouts with the leeway given by its sacrifice.

A more straightforward choice was to make 6 Day Weekend a year-round beer. Not only have we been happy with how this beer has continued to grow, but it is a beer we reach to internally for a charact

erful easy-drinking brew at the end of the day. Knowing we can buy it in Kyoto station, it’s also a nice one to pick up when getting on a Shinkansen to Tokyo as well!

So if we like to reach for this beer right now anyway, why change it? Well, it’s because we believe we can make it better.

There are of course beers in this world we hope never change, like Saison Dupont, Cantillon’s wonderful gueuze, some of the best classic English bitters, and some of the best German lagers. Modern craft beer is still in its relative infancy, however, and we believe there is a lot of finetuning and tweaking that can make our beers even better. With the joining of James, our head brewer, we wanted to take what we had, apply his knowledge, and take these beers that we are proud of to the next level.

Within our 3 core beers, we feel there are different degrees of adjustment that we would like to make, so we’d like to explain a bit about what we decided to change, and why, as well as what we will keep the same.

Let’s start by 

looking at what’s aligned over all 3 beers. When looking to refresh our line-up, there were 4 common elements we wanted to apply to all 3 beers:

・The base malt comes from Belgium. There is a hard-to-pin character in Belgian malt that we found hard to replicate when experimenting with non-Belgium varieties.

・The beers feature hops not only from America, but also New Zealand (our new love affair).

・Traditional bittering hops are replaced with a modern product for a cleaner bittering foundation.

・We use a special piece of equipment that improves hop contribution (in both taste and aroma) to the beer versus traditional methods.

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Ichigo Ichie:

Our original “teiban” and, to many people’s minds, our “flagship”. What makes Ichigo Ichie a great beer is its balance as well as its compatibility with food. This beer isn’t a hop punch to the face, and its character comes more from the yeast, with the malts also remaining subtle in their contribution. The citrus and herbal aromas from the yeast blend with the hops to a point where you’re not sure where one starts and the next finishes. In addition to being refreshing, the dry character, along with the nuances of the yeast, are what it makes it a great beer for a wide variety of food, from shellfish to chicken dishes, and from heavily herbed and spiced foods to fried foods.

One element that we felt could make it more authentic, however, was the fact that unlike the true great saisons of Belgium, it is force carbonated like most modern craft beer, rather than refermented in package.

The changes for Ichigo Ichie are the most subtle of the 3 core beers, but we think will be significant improvements. They consist of the following:

1 For the canned version of the beer, we are adding yeast and sugar before packaging for the purpose of making it secondary fermented in can. What does this do? Well, it has 2 benefits:

・ It makes the beer stronger to spoilage, meaning that it of course lasts longer, potentially in the longer term lending it to being cellar (rather than refrigerator) matured.

・It changes the character, both by increasing the level of carbonation, and also allowing the beer to mature and evolve and mature over time, changing in some positive ways. This is what we love about the great saisons of Belgium, all of which are bottle conditioned, and which develop layers of complexity over time.

2. Hops.
 While we haven’t changed the hop varieties of Cascade and Motueka, we did switch to our new selected hops from when we visited New Zealand and America to choose the best lots we could possible, bringing a brighter citrus and tropical aroma.

3. Malt.
 We switched to a higher quality wheat malt that delivers a softer mouthfeel.

4. ABV.
We decided to make it a touch lighter at 5% (down from 5.5%) to make it even more drinkable and easier to match with dishes that are commonly found in Japan.

6-Day Weekend (Shukyu Muika):
 When this beer was originally conceived, we thought a lot about the American-hybrid beers that we encountered in our trip to Belgium many years ago. The idea was for a low alcohol beer that was disarmingly chock full of flavour.

After several different iterations, we eventually settled on 2 hops: ----Citra (US)
- Ekuanot (US)

 Citra provides punchy citrus (especially pink grapefruit fruitiness) and tropical taste/aroma. Ekuanot compliments with additional citrus elements (especially lemon + lime) and backs it up with accompanying berry and lychee notes. Unfortunately, as the years have gone by, Ekuanot has changed in character and become a little more grassy and herbal and farmers have been moving to grow less and less of it.

In looking to retain the original character that worked so well and also taking into account our hop travels throughout 2024, we decided 3 hops were better than 2:

-Citra (US)
- Waimea (NZ)
- Simcoe (US)

 First off, Citra stays. The citrus and tropical elements were then bolstered with Waimea, known for its tropical aroma and grapefruit-forward flavour profile, and Simcoe, known for lime, passion fruit and pine overtones.

The end result is an impactful light beer that is dry where you don’t feel guilty slinging 1 can (or multiple) after a long day of work.

Ichii Senshin:
 The original idea for this beer was to interweave various hops that play well with and showcase the versatility of our Belgian house yeast character. The added benefit of the Belgian yeast providing a more pronounced dry edge was the icing on top that would want you to keep drinking more.

When this beer first rolled out, it featured 6 hops that were a combo of American and European varietals. Earth, pepper and herbal notes were blended together with orange and grapefruit citrus notes.

When we updated the recipe (this happened when KBC became available in cans), we decided to retain the same total hop payload but focused on 2 American traditional varietals:

-Cascade
-Centennial

Both hops provided a sharp grapefruit and orange character that then melded with the apricot character of our yeast. For the new version, we decided to keep the spirit of “hop + Belgian yeast interplay” intact. However, we let 6-Day Weekend assume full responsibility for presenting citrus character to the customer. In Ichii Senshin, we saw a chance to imbue it with tons of tropical flavour – cue 3 hops:

-Mosaic
-Riwaka
-Rakau

Our specially selected US Mosaic imparts a strong blueberry and melon character. This is then backed up with a near identical payload of New Zealand Riwaka that provides passionfruit, pineapple and citrusy character to the mix. Last, but not least, New Zealand Rakau is added to underlay and bolster the plum and apricot notes derived from our house yeast.

At 6%, this IPA is slightly on the lower end of the alcohol spectrum but the stronger than pale ae ABV means that it has a strong backbone to try and retain all those tropical, berry and stone fruit flavours that come from the hop payload.

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We realise that there is always apprehension when a beer is changed, especially a core or flagship beer. These are the beers that people go back to, and that familiarity with the flavour makes it a risk. Even

if it is better, there can be a tendency to have a fondness towards the original version. But evolving, growing as people and a company, and continually improving, these are things we have always believed in and, as we said 4 years ago, we’d rather stick to our beliefs and brew the beers we want to drink than play it safe. We hope you believe in this too, and like these changes we’ve made. Kanpai!