Series - Lager Love (part 2): The Freshness Factor

 Snackies, anyone? These saku-saku-salad crackers are so tasty. 

Shinkansen, Japan. Next time you drink a beer from a can or a bottle, see if you can find the date it was made. Freshness means a whole lot in the kinds of lagers sold by the Big Four (Kirin, Asahi, Sapporo, Suntory), and in many ways, it seems to be the reason that you can more of than not, you can count on the beers by these Japanese Big Beer Companies to be pretty tasty, or at the least, very drinkable. Maintaining control of the freshness seems to be a way to get by using cheaper ingredients. This was the case for the Kirin Lagers that This One Guy and One Woman had on the Shinkansen train on the way back to Tokyo.

Technically, the Kirin Lager is an Adjunct Lager, which means that in addition to your basic barley, hop, and water combo, there are other cheaper grains like rice, corn, and starch in the mix. These adjuncts are often found in mass produced beers, and the resulting taste is usually somewhat "cleaner" or thinner and a little less pleasant in aroma (aka pee-like), than a 100% barley beer.

But wait!

Ingredients are not the whole story. This Kirin Lager that This One Guy and I sipped on while crossing the coastal planes along the Tokaido route on the Shinkansen was not all that bad. Why? One big reason is probably because it was made within a couple of weeks. Flipping over the can of the Kirin Lagers, we saw that the beers had a date of manufacture printed on the bottom. Fresh from the factory to the shinkansen. It actually seems to be a pretty common practice around here, and it's hard to come by a Big Four Beer that's more than a month old. The question is, how much of the old beer goes to waste?? Big Beer, why are you so mysterious?

A still from NHK Minna no Doyou featuring "Hashire Cho-Tokkyu"

Musical Pairing - Yuasa Joji's "Hashire Cho-Tokkyu" (Run, Super Express!). When the Shinkansen went on its maiden voyage in anticipation of the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, it was a big deal. The world's fastest train captured the hearts of many across Japan. One of Japan's eminent avant-garde composers, Yuasa Joji, was commissioned to write a song for the train. Among students and scholars of contemporary music, Yuasa is famous for his early forays into electronic music and graphic scores for his orchestral pieces, but in Japan, "Hashire Cho-Tokkyu" is by far the most famous of his tunes! Ask any Japanese person born before 1965, and they'll probably recognize the song. By the way, this doesn't make him a sell-out or anything. It's not uncommon for Japanese composers of contemporary, avant-garde, and experimental music to also write music for film, commercials, radio, music textbooks, amateur groups. I think that's kind of cool. Or, at least as good of an alternative to teaching species counterpoint to confused college students. Anyway, listen to the song. The linked version was recorded pretty recently by singer Horie Mitsuko and the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra. It is so catchy.