Craft beer comes in all different colors-- from light gold to bright orange, and even solid black. You can tell how the beer will generally taste and its alcohol content depending on the color-- lighter-colored beers usually taste lighter and are more refreshing, while darker-colored beers have a fuller body and a heavier taste, as well as higher alcohol content. When tasting a flight of beer, it’s best to start with the lighter-colored beer and move on to the darker beer to really taste the difference.
Isana Brewing is named after the word for “whale” from the 8th-century writings in the Man'yōshū. This is because Isana Brewing is located in Akishima City within Tokyo, where they excavated a whole whale skeleton from 2 million years ago. While in the modern day it's quite far from the ocean, back then the area of Akishima was deep under the ocean.
The flagship beer of Isana Brewing is an English-style pale ale called “Toriaezu Bitter.” This kind of “bitter style” beer was first introduced in the 19th century and named this way because it was significantly more bitter than the mainstream beers at the time, which tended to be on the sweet side. “Toriaezu Bitter” also has a gentle taste with a wheat aroma.
Let's taste test a few beers, starting with the light brown “Toriaezu Bitter,” perfect for the first drink.
Akishima City is the only municipality in Tokyo that uses groundwater as its sole water source. It’s no surprise that they can make great beer with such quality water.
“Toriaezu Bitter” was the first beer by Isana Brewing. The bitter style of beer comes in a range of colors and alcohol content, from pale-colored and low alcohol, “light ale,” to the dark amber-colored and higher alcohol content, “premium bitter.” “Toriaezu Bitter” is in the category which sits in between the two poles, called “ordinary bitter.”
The owner explains how he started Isana, saying “I fell in love with the gentle wheat beer I had in London, so when I launched my own brewery and considered the flagship beer, naturally that’s what I had in mind.” It’s a light beer with low carbonation, allowing the gentle taste to permeate gradually.
“Back in the old days of England, it’s said that beer wasn’t really carbonated, since they weren’t able to trap carbon dioxide as we do now. Toriaezu Bitter purposely lowered the carbonation to make the taste similar to old England. Thanks to this process, you can enjoy this type of beer in a variety of ways. So what is this drink?-- ‘It's bitter but not, it's beer but not carbonated-- how odd!’” Just like the story of Akishima and whales, here you can enjoy the surprising backstory behind Toriaezu Bitter.
