友合 (Yugo)

While we often try to challenge ourselves when working on collaboration brews, we didn’t know quite what we were getting into when we started recipe discussions with Hideki Iwata from Daisen G Beer in Tottori Prefecture. While any collaboration has lively back and forth about style, recipe, and technique, nothing to date quite compared to the amount of communication both sides invested in this brew..

Part of the challenge was created by the fact that we were trying to accomplish so much with one beer. We wanted to brew something with sake yeast and rice while at the same time crafting the beer in the vein of a Belgian style using our house yeast. After many long hours of communication over more than two months, we finally had a plan for how to accomplish this: two separate brews on separate days that were then combined into one tank during fermentation. The first brew utilized as much rice as possible to create a sake-like environment the sake yeast, and the second crafted more in the vein of a Belgian Tripel was added to the first along with our house yeast, thereby ensuring that fermentation was being carried out by a blend of the two strains.

The result is one of the most unique brews we have ever produced. Light in color and body, at certain points it tastes very similar to a strong Belgian Golden Ale. With the next sip, though, the high ABV joins together with nuances of unfiltered nigori sake or unpasteurized, undiluted namagenshu sake and makes you question if you are drinking beer or not! Needless to say the long hours of discussion, research, and brewing that saw this beer through from conception to fruition were all well worth it and we are excited to see how you react to this beer/sake hybrid brew!

Naming: This was one of our most ambitious collaborations to date and saw us try to achieve more things in one brew than ever before. This not only required a great deal of fusion between the ideas and techniques of both breweries, but also a lot of good will and friendship between the two in order to prevent the ambitious brew and the countless hours of back and forth regarding its details from creating friction between both parties. “Fusion” or “synergy” in Japanese is usually translated as Yougoh, and by coincidence “you” can also be represented by the character for friendship, while “goh” can mean to combine or bring together. This play on words summed up this collaboration perfectly, hence the name Yugo!