"Beer rescue" mission
2020 was supposed to be a big year for Japan. With the Olympic Games being held in Tokyo, the Island of the Rising Sun was expected to welcome around 40 million visitors. However, due to the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, the Olympics were postponed until next year. Naturally, the country's economy was severely affected.
A significant drop in the number of bars and restaurants has caused beer sales in Japan to fall 26% in the first half of 2020, according to Bloomberg. This is a big problem for small breweries, said Isamu Yoneda, head of the distillery department at craft brewery Kiuchi Brewery. With customers dwindling and export orders canceled, Kiuchi Brewery is left with a pile of waste beer.
The company had to find some solution - and they decided to turn the unsold beer into another alcoholic beverage.
Tonkatsu Tonki restaurant and bar is empty during the pandemic (Photo: Dan Buyanovsky)
In April 2020, Kiuchi Brewery launched the Save Beer Spirits campaign at its Tokyo-based distillery, giving local bars and breweries the chance to turn their unsold beer into gin. That also means:Turn a drink that has a shelf life of only 4 to 6 months into another drink that has no shelf life.
A bottle of craft beer from Kiuchi Brewery (Photo: Internet)
from craft beer to gin
In 1994, Japan relaxed its strict regulations on small-scale brewing, leading to a boom in the craft beer industry. Although the country’s total beer sales have remained stagnant for the past decade, by 2016, craft beer’s market share had tripled from 0.5% in 2007.
Kiuchi Brewery was founded in 1823 as a sake brewery. After the beer industry law was revised, the company was one of many beverage manufacturers to enter the craft beer scene, and has been brewing the exclusive Hitachino Nest brand for 25 years now.
According to Yoneda, the method of turning beer into spirits is not a new invention. Kiuchi has been using beer to make plum wine for many years, and has also experimented with making gin.
Staff at the Kuichi Brewery distillery (Photo: Sadamu Saito)
Most gins are made from grains such as barley, rye, or wheat, which are mashed and steeped until they ferment, and distilled into a high-proof “middle” spirit. The resulting spirit is then distilled a second time with juniper berries and other botanicals for added flavor. In this process, beer is used instead of the middle spirit process, skipping the mashing and fermentation of the grains and going straight to the final distillation stage.
“Kiuchi Brewery asked bars to send a minimum of 20 liters of beer to the factory, which would be sent back as gin,” Yoneda shared.
On average, every 100 liters of beer produces 8 liters of gin, which is sent out in the usual 750ml gin bottles, or as a sparkling gin cocktail in cans or kegs for customers who want to drink straight from the tap.
Using beer to make gin would give it a bitter taste, but in addition to juniper berries, Kiuchi Brewery also uses Japanese pepper, lemon and orange to "balance the bitterness" with "citrus aromas," Yoneda said.
Large tanks are used to distill craft beer into gin at Kiuchi Brewery's distillery in Ishioka, Ibaraki Prefecture, Japan (Photo: Sadamu Saito)
for a sustainable market
In the Beer Rescue campaign, bars only need to pay for delivery costs, and Kiuchi will help distill for free. "In these difficult times, we have a responsibility to provide services to everyone. Most importantly, we want to keep breweries and bars alive," Yoneda said.
Kiuchi Brewery isn’t the only producer using beer to make gin. The Ethical Spirits & Co. was founded in February 2020 to help sake distilleries turn their leftover sake into other spirits. When the pandemic hit and beer sales plummeted, The Ethical Spirits & Co. began looking for new recipes for making beer-based gin, says co-founder Chikara Ono.
In May 2020, the company received a donation of 20,000 liters of Budweiser beer that was about to expire from the giant AB InBev - which also had a large surplus of the beverage due to a sharp decline in beer sales. From that donation, Ono's company produced 4,500 bottles of gin.
Revive gin is made with Budweiser beer, and is flavored with lemon peel, oak, cinnamon, and san'ontō (a sweet, dark sugar) - Photo: The Ethical Spirits & Co.
"We were having problems with excess inventory, and Ethical Spirits had the right knowledge and motivation to create a new product that we thought would have a positive impact. This also provided support for local businesses," said Takahiro Shimada, Head of Marketing at AB InBev Japan.
In mid-2020, The Ethical Spirits & Co. was still in the process of building a distillery in Tokyo. In December, the factory officially opened and partnered with sake brewer Gekkeikan to distill Budweiser beer. Since then, a series of innovations and new recipes for making beer-based gin have been exploited, quickly becoming an emerging market in Japan.
Beam Suntory acquired British craft gin maker Sipsmith in 2016 and launched Roku, Japan's first craft gin, in 2017 (Photo: Beam Suntory)
Japan’s first dedicated gin distillery, opened by Beam Suntory in Kyoto just five years ago, is already worth an estimated $209 million and is expected to grow 4.4% annually over the next three years. Major beverage companies, including Japan’s renowned whisky makers Suntory and Nikka, have helped bring Japanese craft gin to the international market.
According to Ono, the current drinking trend in Japan is gin soda and canned cocktails, which gives brewers the opportunity to repurpose excess drinks in a sustainable way. "If we can use leftover or unsold ingredients to create something more special and premium, that would be great. It fits well with our efforts to achieve a stable and sustainable economy," he said.
