与謝野の飛躍 (Yosano Stride)

While we look forward to all of our brew days here at Kyoto Brewing Co., but this is probably one of the ones we look forward to the most each year, and the extra time, effort, and care that goes into it mean it always has a special place in our production calendar. The reason? It uses fresh picked hops grown right here in Kyoto!

While the majority of brewing ingredients are imported from overseas, one of the organizations leading the way in domestically produced options is the Kyoto Yosano Hop Growers Guild (京都与謝野ホップ生産者組合 ). By pure chance, the guild began to take form around the same time that Kyoto Brewing Co. was getting off the ground, and we quickly formed a friendship with the organizers and attended their first harvest. With each passing year the quality of the hops has improved, and we were excited to come home with ten kilograms of freshly picked Cascade and Columbus from this year’s harvest.

As with past years we crafted a recipe that can highlight the unique aroma of fresh, undried, unprocessed hops. To express this through a beer we kept the base as simple as possible, using a blend of Pilsner and wheat malt, and selected a yeast that is new to us but more at home in the delicate Kolsch beers of Germany. This yeast gives a slight hint of fruitiness while leaving the beer dry and drinkable and was a perfect match for what we were trying to achieve. To better utilize the hops, we also tried a new technique of lowering the temperature at which we use them in order to prevent their delicate aromatic oils from being boiled away.

The result is one of our proudest Yosano fresh hop beers to date and we hope you enjoy this liquid representation of a stroll through the hop fields of northern Kyoto!

Naming:Working with the Kyoto Yosano Hop Growers Guild each of the last five years has allowed us to see the growth of their operation first hand. While their hops have exceeded expectations from the beginning, this year’s crop was one of the best yet, showing just how far they have come in a short amount of time. Not to be outdone, we incorporated new methods to get the best essence of these hops into the final product, and feel that this year’s beer has been a growth in leaps and bounds for both parties!