Brewmaster Toshi Ishii has unleashed his finest real ales on the discerning drinkers at the Great British Beer Festival, the first time that cask-conditioned Japanese beer has been available in the UK -- and they're going down rather well.
Beer drinkers across the globe may have heard of Japanese brewing giants Asahi and Kirin but Ishii, head of the Nagoya-based Yo-Ho Brewing Company, is determined to put his ground-breaking Japanese real ale on the map.
He brought over a barrel each of Yona Yona ("Every Night" in Japanese) Ale and Tokyo Black Ale to the five-day London festival, which boasts the biggest range of beer of any in the world.
The annual event, which closed on Saturday, is the world's largest showcase for real ales -- beer brewed using traditional ingredients and left to mature in the cask from which it is served.
In the Bieres Sans Frontieres section at the rest of the world bar, Ishii tells curious punters all about his Japanese real ale revolution.
"I hope Japan will become a nation of real ale drinkers," Ishii said as he proudly poured a taste of Tokyo Black.
"Many Japanese people are not familiar with the difference between lagers and real ales," he said.
"I want to introduce real ales to Japanese people and I want to introduce our beers to people over here," he added.
Ishii learnt the tricks of the trade at the Stone Brewing Co in San Diego, California, and took the real ale craftsmanship he learnt there back home to begin teaching Japanese brewers.
"We didn't have any breweries in Japan that could make cask ales," he said.
Since he started brewing real ale at Yo-Ho in 2002, there are now 15 breweries in Japan that can make it, along with 250 micro-breweries in Japan, Ishii said.
Yona Yona, a US-style golden pale ale, is Yo-Ho's flagship beer and a bestseller among craft beers in Japan.
Tokyo Black, which is gaining popularity in Japan among Guinness drinkers, is a porter -- a dark, slightly sweetish beer.
Ishii is determined to return to the event next year, and on the evidence of empty glasses and drained casks, British punters will be glad to have him back.
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday inaugurated the Danjiang Bridge across the Tamsui River in New Taipei City, saying that the structure would be an architectural icon and traffic artery for Taiwan. Feted as a major engineering achievement, the Danjiang Bridge is 920m long, 211m tall at the top of its pylon, and is the longest single-pylon asymmetric cable-stayed bridge in the world, the government’s Web site for the structure said. It was designed by late Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid. The structure, with a maximum deck of 70m, accommodates road and light rail traffic, and affords a 200m navigation channel for boats,
PRECISION STRIKES: The most significant reason to deploy HIMARS to outlying islands is to establish a ‘dead zone’ that the PLA would not dare enter, a source said A High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) would be deployed to Penghu County and Dongyin Island (東引) in Lienchiang County (Matsu) to force the Chinese military to retreat at least 100km from the coastline, a military source said yesterday. Taiwan has been procuring HIMARS and Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) from the US in batches. Once all batches have been delivered, Taiwan would possess 111 HIMARS units and 504 ATACMS, which have a range of 300km. Considering that “offense is the best defense,” the military plans to forward-deploy the systems to outlying islands such as Penghu and Dongyin so that
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest foundry service provider, yesterday said that global semiconductor revenue is projected to hit US$1.5 trillion in 2030, after the figure exceeds US$1 trillion this year, as artificial intelligence (AI) demand boosts consumption of token and compute power. “We are still at the beginning of the AI revolution, but we already see a significant impact across the whole semiconductor ecosystem,” TSMC deputy cochief operating officer Kevin Zhang (張曉強) said at the company’s annual technology symposium in Hsinchu City. “It is fair to say that in the past decade, smartphones and other mobile devices were
‘CLEAR MESSAGE’: The bill would set up an interagency ‘tiger team’ to review sanctions tools and other economic options to help deter any Chinese aggression toward Taiwan US Representative Young Kim has introduced a bill to deter Chinese aggression against Taiwan, calling for an interagency “tiger team” to preplan coordinated sanctions and economic measures in response to possible Chinese military or political action against Taiwan. “[Chinese President] Xi Jinping [習近平] has directed the People’s Liberation Army to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. China has a plan. America should have one too,” Kim said in a news release on Thursday last week. She introduced the “Deter PRC [People’s Republic of China] aggression against Taiwan act” to “ensure the US has a coordinated sanctions strategy ready should
RSS