Part 1
YOHO Brewing Was Born from a Dream: To Bring the Captivating Taste of Ale to Every Corner of Japan

When Hoshino Yoshiharu, now CEO of Hoshino Resorts, first tried ale as a student in the United States, he was so impressed that he made up his mind to popularize it in Japan one day. That ambition came to fruition years later in Nagano in the form of a craft brewery, YOHO Brewing, of which he was the founding president. We asked two brewers involved in creating YOHO Brewing’s distinctive flavor, founding member Fukuoka Atsushi (right) and Morita Masafumi (left), about the brewery and the beer it makes.

There’s more to beer than the lager most Japanese drink! What makes ale such a captivating brew?

The city of Saku in eastern Nagano Prefecture is surrounded by the 2,000-meter-plus peaks of Mount Asama and the Yatsugatake range. Japan’s longest river, the Chikuma River, flows majestically through the city center. The place enjoys sunny skies throughout the year, with fresh, clear air, and it’s known for its delicious water and produce. While abounding in natural beauty, it’s easily accessible from the greater Tokyo region and serves as the gateway to Shinshu, as Nagano is also known. It’s also adjacent to Karuizawa, a famous summer resort. This is where YOHO Brewing set up a brewery and got its start in 1996, and it’s been making craft beer here since 1997. It’s one of the few breweries in Japan that specializes in ale.

Beers are divided into lagers and ales based on the different ways they’re fermented. In Japan, major liquor companies started making and selling beer around the time of the Meiji Restoration in 1868. But they all produced lagers, which are fermented at cool temperatures. None of them produced ale, which is fermented at room temperature, a more laborious process.

A major turning point in the history of beer in Japan came with the revision of the Liquor Tax Act in 1994. The required minimum annual production was lowered, leading to a proliferation of microbreweries all over Japan and triggering the microbrew craze. (Back in those days, it was generally called microbrew rather than craft beer.)

Saku Brewery in Saku, Nagano Prefecture. The place’s accessibility, coupled with its excellent water, were the deciding factors in choosing this location.

There were seven founding members including the current president, Ide Naoyuki. One of them was Fukuoka Atsushi, who joined the company in 1995. He recalls those days as follows.

“Many producers got off to a flying start by bringing over brewers and other technicians from abroad. Mr. Hoshino, though, was of a different mindset. Technical people from abroad would sooner or later return home, he believed, so the company needed to have Japanese technical staff. I wanted to be a brewer, and for about a year before the start of production, I studied beer making from square one in Seattle, USA. I went there all on my own.”

In Seattle, Atsushi attended language school while apprenticing at a brewery. He also took classes at a brewing school. Sometimes he was so busy that he was almost ready to give up. What kept him going was the great taste of the local beer.

“When I tried ale, which I’d never drunk in Japan, it tasted incredibly good. So this is what ale tastes like, I thought. I wanted to make the same type of beer in Japan.”

The brewery’s founder had a dream, and now Atsushi enthusiastically took it up. That’s how wonderful ale tastes. But what kind of beer is it? Ale differs from lager in how it’s fermented. Lager is made by “bottom fermentation” for an extended period at low temperature. It’s characterized by its smooth taste and the ease with which it goes down. Because it’s fermented at a cool temperature, it tends not to develop flavor and aroma compounds. By the same token, unwanted bacteria can’t easily multiply, making it suited to mass production. Ale, on the other hand, is made by “top fermentation” for a relatively short period at room temperature. While it requires meticulous care during production, it possesses a fruity, floral aroma and a full-bodied taste.

“The main ingredients of beer are malt, hops, yeast, and water. Beers are classified into various types or ‘styles’ depending on what ingredients are used and in what proportions, as well as the brewing process. There are said to be some 150 beer styles altogether, and there are far more styles of ale than lager. There’s pale ale, Belgian white ale , stout, porter, and so on. They each have a different color and aroma and taste and alcohol content and deliver a distinctive taste experience.”

This sheer diversity is one of the things that makes ale so appealing to a brewer.

Fukuoka Atsushi, who trained in the US at the time of the company’s founding, was involved in developing Yona Yona Ale, an American pale ale every bit as good as anything stateside.

Building up expertise in brewing ale. And coming out with a steady stream of hit products.

YOHO Brewing started making beer in March 1997 on obtaining its beer brewing license.

“Usually, it takes at least six months from product planning and development to production. But we already had product releases scheduled for June and July. So I spent the two or three months after we got our license working on a series of test brews while drawing on the know-how I’d acquired making various beers during my stay in the US.”

It was a frenetic few months, but the company achieved its cherished goal and released the ales on time. There were three of them: the wheat ale Karuizawa Kogen Beer Wild Forest, the amber ale Karuizawa Kogen Beer National Trust, and the American pale ale Yona Yona Ale.

“Yona Yona Ale is our flagship product, designed to popularize ale in Japan. It’s a genuine American pale ale made with American-grown hops, and it can rival anything made in the US, the pioneer of craft beer. Karuizawa Kogen Beer, on the other hand, is available only in Karuizawa. It’s a premium brew that will satisfy discerning drinkers who live in that special place and are familiar with the taste of different beers worldwide. I believed we’d come up with a really fine product, but I was plagued with misgivings at the same time. Was it really good enough? When I noticed someone checking out the product in the store, I found myself sending telepathic signals from the shadows [laughs].”

Yona Yona Ale is YOHO Brewing’s signature beer. “Yona yona” means “every evening” in Japanese. It was so named in the hope that people would drink ale literally every evening.

A turn of events the next year transformed Atsushi’s misgivings into confidence. Yona Yona Ale was awarded the gold medal at the Great Japan Beer Festival, the country’s largest celebration of craft beers, held since 1998. It has consistently received favorable reviews at various shows and competitions ever since. Such events have also created opportunities to form connections across the craft beer industry.

“We swap information with other brewing companies and attend their parties. We get on quite well together. I guess that’s because we all know we’ve each been working hard to forge ahead. Eventually the craze petered out, and for a while the entire industry suffered a slump in sales. Here at YOHO Brewing, we even ended up having to use both sides of the copy paper. But no matter how much we cut back spending, there was one thing we never scrimped on: the brewing ingredients, which affect the taste of the beer. All of us at the company were on the same page about that, including the big boss himself. It was around that time that we began expanding into online sales as a way to turn things around.

“If you sell nothing but the same old thing all the time, sooner or later people will tire of it. We wanted to build up our brewing expertise. So in 2002, we started releasing a seasonal version of Karuizawa Kogen Beer in a different beer style each year. The reviews this received and the knowledge we gained in the process were then mirrored in our other products.”

The seasonal beer released in 2003, India Pale Ale, garnered favorable reviews for its hoppy bitterness and full-bodied taste. It led to the birth of one of the brewery’s most popular brews, Aooni IPA.

Front row, from right: Sinless Satan, with 0.7% ABV despite being brewed in the same way as craft beer; Aooni IPA, an India pale ale popular for its eye-popping bitterness; Suiyoubi no Neko, a Belgian white ale characterized by its refreshing aroma of green apples; Yona Yona Ale, an American pale ale with a floral, hoppy aroma and a mildly bittersweet taste; Karuizawa Kogen Beer Wild Forest, only available in Karuizawa; and Karuizawa Kogen Beer 2024 Limited, the seasonal version of the same, released annually with a different flavor.

Trying my hand at a new beer style as a young brewer in my third year

In 2012, while still in his third year on the job, Morita Masafumi took charge of developing Suiyoubi no Neko. He had joined YOHO Brewing after studying fermentation at university. He too was captivated by the allure of ale.

“The first time I tried pale ale, I was amazed at how good it tasted. I wanted to make top-fermented beer myself and bring it to the masses. I’d joined the company fresh out of university, so naturally I had zero brewing experience. At first I observed more experienced colleagues doing the job and tried applying what I’d learned. But whenever I thought I’d made some progress, I was quickly reminded that I still had a long way to go. That happened repeatedly.

“Still, I’d built up some know-how by working on developing various products, when calls arose in house to develop a white beer like no other before. This was a new challenge, and I was game. So I volunteered for the job.”

Morita Masafumi, currently head of brewing, is involved in developing virtually everything the brewery makes.

At some breweries the beer recipe is made by the brewmaster alone, but YOHO Brewing is different. It gives young brewers a chance. If they don’t have enough experience, the rest of the team back them up. White beer, however, was a beer style that the brewery had never made before. Masafumi had to start from scratch and do the job alone.

“Our model was a white beer made by a Belgian brewer that had been successful on the market. But recipes aren’t in the public domain. I had to tweak the proportion of the ingredients and how much they were fermented. It was a classic case of reverse engineering . I made one test batch after another, sampling each and modifying the recipe accordingly.”

Masafumi felt he was close to the taste he was aiming for, when a brewery team from South Korea visited on a tour and tried his beer.

“‘This is incredible. It tastes great.’ they said. ‘How many years have you been on the job? We want to make a beer like this,’ they gushed [laughs]. I suppose there was an element of lip service in this, but I was still delighted to win the approval of the pros.”

The entrance to Saku Brewery is lined with the many medals and awards won by its beers.

Pulling off the tough task of making low-alcohol beer

Changing lifestyles have affected how well different beers sell. One recent trend is the popularity of alcohol-free and low-alcohol beers.

“In the old days, alcohol-free and low-alcohol beer served as mere beer substitutes,” says Atsushi. “We didn’t think they were seriously worth making. But then I tried a beer from a Danish brewery, and I was amazed. It had all the flavor of beer despite its low alcohol content. It really did taste good. Fermentation typically infuses flavor and umami, but on the flip side, it also raises alcohol content. There are several ways to make alcohol-free and low-alcohol beer. You can mix various ingredients and add aroma to create a beer taste, which gives you an alcohol-free beverage. For low-alcohol beer, you either remove the alcohol by distilling the beer after making it, or you fully ferment while keeping the ABV to 1 percent or less. The latter method is the more challenging for a brewer, but that’s what we aimed to pull off.”

Then, in 2022, Sinless Satan was released, which has a satisfying beer taste despite its ABV of 0.7 percent. By the next year, this low-alcohol beer with its delicious new flavor was being sold all over Japan.

Atsushi is currently supply and demand manager. As such, he keeps track of lifestyle changes and market trends while exploring what product directions to pursue in response to today’s needs.

The question as YOHO Brewing enters uncharted territory: What sets its craft beer apart?

The people at YOHO Brewing have brought a series of great-tasting beers to the market while steadily building up their expertise. Never have they strayed from their vision of popularizing ale in Japan. So what are their sights set on now? Masafumi wants to take on a new challenge as a brewer.

“Internationally, there’s been a huge growth in interest in Japanese culinary culture. There are Americans who come to Japan to study sake and then open their own sake brewery on returning home. Koji too is popular in the US. Well, we’re going to be exhibiting at a beer festival in California this June. I was wondering what beer to take there, when I suddenly remembered that we’d once made a beer with rice koji and sake lees we got from a local sake brewer. I intend to revive it this year and take it to California.”

The days of emulating the countries that have traditionally dominated the beer industry are over. The question facing YOHO Brewing today is what sets its beer apart. Whereas previously it imported all its brewing ingredients, Yama no Ue New’ee, released in 2022, is made with hops grown in Shinshu. Masafumi continues. “Maybe it’s time to change our mindset as a craft brewer. One day, we’d love to make a craft beer using all Nagano ingredients as a way to assert our identity, though that’s still a tall order. Of course, it’s not something we can do all on our own. But by strengthening our local networks, we want to make that dream happen.”

Part 2 will describe how craft beer is made.
【Continued in Part 2】