American beer has influenced the world—but now, Japanese beer is starting to return the favor.
Over the past half-decade, a handful of big Japanese brewing companies have made major investments in North America, starting with Sapporo’s purchase of San Francisco’s historic Anchor Brewing Company in 2017. Two years later, Kirin bought Colorado’s New Belgium, followed by Bell’s Brewery in Michigan in 2021. Sapporo fired back by buying another California legend, Stone, in 2022. Then, at the start of this year, Asahi announced its plans to purchase Octopi, a large but mostly under-the-radar Wisconsin brewery that contract-brews beer for several leading craft brands. Asahi initially plans to make at least 700,000 cases per year at Octopi, though additional investments are possible, the company noted.
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So, what do all these moves mean? You’re much more likely to see beers from Japan’s big producers in wide distribution across the U.S. and Canada. And it’s not just big brands from Japan that are turning heads on this side of the Pacific: A number of the country’s craft brewers have also earned dedicated fans in North America, thanks to their embrace of special techniques, unusual ingredients and often charmingly quirky label art.
This versatility is what makes the island nation’s beer scene so appealing, says Ry Beville, a lecturer in Japanese literature at U.C. Berkeley and publisher of the bilingual magazine Japan Beer Times.
“Japanese
This Article was originally published on Wine Enthusiast
