A Plum Alternative

I became a bit of a beer snob while living in Seattle. It was hard not to. Microbreweries in abundance with all kinds of innovative, delicious brews on tap, beer that actually made you feel buzzed and satisfied after one instead of bloated and still sober after three or four. Then in D.C. we could get Dogfish Head. Here in Korea we basically have the Hydra of Max, Cass, Hite, and occasionally O.B. - all heads of the same boring snake (M thinks Hite is the best but I honestly can't tell the difference).

It says "tea" but it's actually more like a concentrate

However, the other night we made an incredible discovery. I had had M go to the store to look for "meshil" (basically, plum syrup/concentrate) for a seaweed banchan I was making that I learned at Cheonjangsa. Although it took a bit of work, (not as straightforward as I thought it would be), he came back with a can of 梅丹("medan" or "Plum tea" in English) which worked just fine for my purposes.

Since I only needed a bit for the banchan, we had discussed using the rest for a drink mixer - mixing the rest it with soju, which seemed natural, but then during dinner he was inspired to splash a bit of it in his cup of Hite - shades of what we used to get at Domku - and the resulting concoction transformed watery mass market beer into a slightly tart, fruity, refreshing libation. After trying that, I don't see any reason to go back to drinking plain beer here anymore.

Beer x 3

Not many microbrews in Japan to our knowledge. Here are three that we tried while we were there, from two breweries. One was enjoyed on the train, while the latter two were enjoyed in a Nakano park on a cloudy weekday morning (after 10 but before noon. we're bad news). It was very enjoyable sitting in the park, sipping our beer. While we were sitting there, an older man in a dark blue yukata came out, sat on a park bench a couple benches down to our right, and started smoking.
A few minutes later, he was accosted by another man, fairly fashionably dressed in a hat and suit, who started berating him for smoking (M. was translating for me; he determined that they already knew each other because the younger man was addressing the older man with "umae" which would have been rude if the two didn't already know each other well). Overall, we liked all three of the beers, though I recall that we liked the Pale Ale from Ginkakogen brewery the best. I remember that one of them tasted kind of like Hoegaarden (I'm pretty sure it was the first one pictured). If you're in Tokyo, you can find them at the Natural Lawson. I'm not sure where else they can be found. I've also included links to websites for the breweries (in Japanese, of course).


Ginkakogen beer: The pale ale was a little better.

Yona Yona: from Yo-Ho brewing company in Karuizawa, Nakano