Series - Lager Love: Big Beers of Japan (part 1)

 Above, everyone's favorite beer landmark / architectural failure in Tokyo. Pictured to the left is the headquarters of Asahi. The building on the right-hand side is the lovely Asahi Beer Hall, with its famous rooftop sculpture. It's also called Super Dry Hall along with other nicknames, like the「うんこビル」   (image adapted from boomin diary, http://plaza.rakuten.co.jp/boomin3/diary/200703190000/)


Tokyo, Japan. Big Beer in Japan is full of wonders. One Woman is about to dedicate a series of posts to the Big Four breweries of Japan. Kirin, Asahi, Sapporo (includes Ebisu), and Suntory are really what you will find everywhere in Japan. I hope to share a few things that I love about Japanese beer and Japanese beer culture. Lager Love.

Nothing beats the post-hike beer <3

But wait--each of these is part of a dizzying array of multinational corporate webs that can seem pretty impersonal, sinister, or sublime, whatever your take is. Still, to dismiss these monster corporations as only Big Evil networks is also to overlook what exactly makes them so attractive, and so powerful to the point of no return (the hole is still unplugged!!). It also ignores the fact that these corporations--like any other kind of culture--all have fascinating histories and deep, dark secrets that directly affected (and were affected by) the lives of towns and railways, laws, drinking culture, national image, wars, and all that stuff. What's clear is that the history of beer as we know and love it today is inseparable from industrialization and capitalism since the mid-19th century.

The other reason that I want to write about the Big Four is that among some US drinkers of Japanese beers, there seems to be a misconception about these "imported" Japanese beers. Namely, that they are on par with the average big American adjunct beer (i.e., kind of nasty). One Woman wants to put such judgments into context. Of the Japanese beers consumed in the US, Sapporo and Asahi are brewed in Canada by Molson. Kirin is made in the Anheuser-Busch facilities in Torrance, California. So, no wonder they taste like Molson, Coors and Bud. Suntory beers are imported from Japan in the US, but do not enjoy the wide distribution that the other three do. Suntory beers also suffer from transatlantic travel.

Temple of Beer or Temple of Doom?

The other question is, are these even "Japanese" beers? For example--Suntory is a huge beverages-and- mo' company that makes Midori in Mexico, imports and produces Häagen-Dazs ice-cream in Japan, manages Scotland's Morrison Bowmore Distillers, produces and distributes PepsiCo's brands on the East Coast (US), and so on. Big business. And so, it brings me to the musical pairing of Lady Gaga – selected by a classroom of college students as an example of a practioner of "global," "universal," and "international"music. "Poker Face." Okay, fine, I admit, I also spent way too long watching MichellePhan becoming Lady Gaga on youtube today. "Just having fun, replicating her style," as Michelle puts it, in her sassy, silvery voice. This one too (Poker Face).

Ebisu: The Town Named After a Beer

Residents of Tokyo and visitors might now know of Ebisu as the hip little grown-up enclave next to crazy Shibuya. But actually, 100 years ago, Ebisu was a pretty open land, where a bunch of dudes decided they wanted to create some German style brews. Fast forward a few decades, their beer became so famous (including a grand prix at the 1904 World's Fair, ahead of both European and American beers) that they needed to build a railroad station to ship their goods. The town was then named after the train station, which was named after the beer. They even created a god of business, Ebisu-sama. That's powerful.

(photo by r.)

One Woman and This One Guy took a trip to the headquarters of Ebisu/Sapporo beer, and sampled some tasty sips of fresh Ebisu Beer (lager) and Creamy Top Stout - "what a creamy taste." Indeed. The Ebisu is a lovely golden wheat color, silky smooth, with tiny perfect bubbles on top (thanks to high-tech tapping technology: one tip for the beer, switch to a specially designed tip to create the head). Really nicely balanced malt and hops and a little bit of young hop taste make this a great beer for lightly flavored Japanese food and other rice/veg/fish/tofu based meals. Yum!! 

(photo by r.)

Here's the Ebisu song. This catchy tune plays every time the JR train stops Ebisu station.

Stay tuned for more beers from around Japan. Gotta go now! One Woman and This One Guy have a Shinkansen to catch!

Moving and Thank You

Dear Angel of Beer,

THANK YOU for leaving a six-pack of Tecate in my fridge (is your name Irene??)!! Were you somehow able to anticipate those moments of tearful panic on the phone with the moving company? Negotiations about parking laws with the crazy lady next door? Did you know that I would have to battle a floppy mattress down the stairs in the middle of the night?

Tecate: Fizzy, yellow, lager, and so, so fine.

Sincerely,
     O.

P.S. Here's the musical pairing, from Love in Tokyo (1966): Aa jare aa zara - classic Bollywood flick. If the amount of rain during a love song is a measure for the guy's love for the girl, this dude is serious. Actually, Rafi Sahab, known to some as "the voice" or "man with the golden voice" is serious pretty business.

Lucky Hand Cali Common

Cali Common is the fresh, home-baked version of San Francisco's famous craft beer, Anchor steam. The Lucky Hand interpretation of this type of California lager is kind of like the big, steamy, odd-shaped home baked breakfast scone that's otherwise delicious. For the record, Anchor Steam and the Cali Common are both California steam beers (sneak preview: more on this topic/controversy forthcoming in a post that will seek to disambiguate steam beer vs. Steam Beer vs. California steam beer. Confusing!! I'm waiting for journals from 1898 to arrive in my inbox to better clarify this topic).
 

Touch/taste/smell--toasty, bready, or even donuty, mildly carbonated, with a nice hoppiness. In contrast to the soft, cloudy, strawberry blond / grapefruit color, the foam is hilariously giant and bright white. That kind of adds to the charm, but be warned--this is what happens if you don't pour it SUPER slowly:

For a steam beer it's pretty robust. A fun blend of organic malt, hops and yeast, it can be complex if you want it to be, but never in a way that interferes with your ability to enjoy your food or company. My favorite part of this beer is the wonderful fresh-baked bread smell. Or maybe it's the hops. It has a pleasant bitterness to it and a really great sweet grassy finish that's short, but bold. Cali Common would be a great dinner beer for hearty vegetable dishes, pastas, beans, or big salads with whole grains. One Woman paired it with a meal of cauliflower and roasted garlic pasta with capers and anchovies tangled in spelt pasta, with an orange fennel salad with cured olives. Joined by two Friends in Culinary Crime.

The word on Lucky Hand Brewing--Based in San Rafael, CA, founded by Jesse Edwin Evans, Samuel Evans, and William A. Jablon. Their beers are crafted by Linden Street Brewery in Oakland by brewmaster Adam Lamoreaux. They're both brand new (Linden Street started releasing their brews to the world in early September 2009; Lucky Hand first officially became a product in December 2009). One Woman wishes them many more brews and great success!!

Musical Pairing: Herbie Hancock, Maiden Voyage (which is part of this ridiculously genius video), but you can hear Herbie playing it if you click on the song name. The sus chords of the vamp feel like anticipation and a sense of you-could-go-anywhere embodied literally in harmonic language. (This song always makes me think of an ancient-to-the-future ship with a unicorn flag floating on a sea of pink velvety clouds. Right, everyone, right????)

Brooklyn Lager, Love

Brooklyn Lager was perhaps One Woman's first malty love. I mean, *true* love. Of course, there's a lot to love about many, many beers. I love Green Flash Le Freak because it's a sexy masterwork of hoptasticness, or the Monk's Cafe Flemish Sour because it opened up whole new terrain of the sensorium. And can you really beat the delight of a fruity and potent Karmeliet Tripel poured to you directly by the brewery under a tent at the the beer festival in Brussells? But while Brooklyn Lager is  a great beer in its own right--it has deliciously toasted malts and  beautifully sculpted by understated foam, hops that smell like early summer grass--words fail to describe my love for this beer. As Uncle Roland used to say, "What is there to say about what one loves except I love it, and keep on saying it?" Brooklyn Lager is a beer with memories. The smell and the taste immediately awakens sensations of places, times, sounds, all swirled together into something magical and joyfully fizzy. That a trademark recipe, and the promise in the green, black, and yellow sign can bring you all this love is both wonderful and very frightening. Love complicates capitalism.  

One Woman lived in the moment with this Brooklyn Lager with This One Guy, who brought home a happy six pack of these beers for a movie night at home. While watching Roman Polanski's China Town, the Brooklyn Lager accompanied us in rediscovering the joys of 1970s Hollywood orchestral re-imaginations of 1930s LA.

"Hold it there, kitty-cat!"

Nothing stands between me and my Brooklyn, except Roman Polanski

Musical Pairing of the moment: "Feels so Good," by Chuck Mangione, fluegelhorn player and composer, born and bred in New York State (click on the link to listen). "Feels so Good" is a 1970s classic that sent Chuck soaring up the charts in 1977. It's got all the outward markers of smooth jazz, but with tight arrangements and real chops in the background--although that's sugar coated too. But don't be fooled by prejudice. Smooth jazz, just like any genre of music you're able to purchase, market buy tickets to see, share videos of, whatever, is bound up in a complex relationship of love, repulsion, and money. But anyway, it feels so good, and sounds so good. This is lounge jazz at its best, even though he's left out of most written accounts of jazz history. This song is dedicated to This One Guy, with love.

Simpler Times Lager – Minhas Craft Brewery (or, the Trader Joe's Lager)

"Simpler Times Lager." It's a lager, for the simpler times. The name, "simpler" describes the "times," not the beer. Perhaps it's trying to strike our nostalgic nerve. Simpler. Simpler, compared to what? But then again, Trader Joe's is the last place this One Woman would associate with those good old days. (Remember this madness when TJ's opened in NYC?). Besides, I say good riddance to those simpler times when it was not so cool for ladies to drink, much less write, about beer.

But title aside,  $4.00 for for a six pack! Unbeatable! The cost makes this casual, unobtrusive, yellow beer an excellent choice for Trader Joes receptions, preferred by artists and musicians in the US, coast to coast. Seriously, what would the US art world do without TJ's?

...this is how One Woman ended up with a can of Simpler Times in her hand this evening, at a gallery opening at Warehouse 416 in Oakland, part of the monthly Oakland Art Murmur event. The space and rocket-themed show included a display of glowing alien specimen in tubes by Molly Reichert and Colleen Paz, and tunes by Patricia Chavez.

Inside Elwyn's studio
 

Also exhibiting, or actually, opening up her workshop, was milliner, artist, and DJ, Elwyn Crawford, who is the owner of O'Lover Hats. These hats are so lovingly crafted, look, feel, AND fit gorgeously. I love that Elwyn opens up her studio to visitors, and makes the work in progress part of the thing that she's selling. Asked about the relevance of beer in relation to her lovely hats, she immediately responded with something to the extent of, of course beer and hats go together - party people love hats, and beer! This woman rocks.

Outside, One Woman ordered a delicious falafel sandwich with sweet potato fries (very highly recommended) from Liba's food truck. A small sweet potato fry offered by One Woman to two more women (Ruth Boerefijn and Elizabeth) outside the truck prompted Ruth, an artist, to tell a beautiful story about how meaningful one sweet potato was for one struggling woman in a mining town in 19th-century America. Then, Elizabeth, also an artist, and Ruth's former assistant, told a story about potato peel pie. Potatoes? WTF, you may say, but throughout history, these grains--as nourishment, as commodity, as memory, and as national symbol, have managed to make some serious impact on the lives and livelihood of people.

What does all this have to do with Simpler Times / simpler times? Not too much. But without at all saying that a beer enables anything (as of now, I'm under the impression that beer doesn't have agency), tonight, all around, cans of TJ beer witnessed so many connections, conversations, and meetings, unforeseen, which I thought were quite lovely.

Musical pairing of the day: Tuning in to the outer-space and rocket ship theme, and exploration of the unknown, of the the show at the Warehouse the musical selection today is, "Cosmic Rays Dreaming," recorded by the Cosmic Rays, a doo wop / rhythm and blues group active in the early 1950s, led by someone you may know better as Sun Ra, since the later the 1950s.  Sun Ra biographer John Szwed writes that the songs and lyrics were based on dreams that Sun Ra had recorded. If you listen to it expecting the Sun Ra you know and love, the cosmic rays are shockingly doo wop. But it also has the unmistakable sound of Sun Ra.