Kurihara in Miyagi gets its first local craft brewery

In Miyagi Prefecture, in Japan’s north-eastern Tohoku region, the city of Kurihara has gained its first craft brewery: Kurikoma Yama Beer, which opened on 29 August 2026. It stands in an old shopping street in the city’s Kurikoma district, in the converted premises of a long-established tofu shop that had closed. Across Japan, small teams continue to open breweries in small rural towns, separate from the big manufacturers. What sets this brewery apart is its approach of deciding its standard beer together with its customers.

From tofu shop to brewery

The converted building houses the brewing equipment and a taproom (a drinking area attached to a brewery) where freshly made beer can be enjoyed on the spot. The representative, Daiki Miura (46), has adopted the motto “beer made together with everyone” and aims to build a brewery rooted in the local community. The start-up funds were raised through crowdfunding, with around 500 supporters from across the country. The process of building the brewery was serialised on its official YouTube channel, which suggests that the local community and supporters have been involved since the preparation stage.

The flagship beer will be decided by customers

The brewery plans to make six types of beer by January 2027 and will take customers’ opinions into account in choosing its “standard” beer. The name of the standard beer has already been settled as “Kurikoma Yama White”, but its content is still to be worked out, which is an unusual order of doing things. It can be seen as an attempt to link drinkers’ reactions directly to the creation of the flavour, rather than simply selling a finished product.

The first beer is a Belgian-style white

The beer produced to mark the opening is based on the Belgian white beer, “Belgian White”. It uses German and Belgian hops, and its light, crisp drinking character is joined by a mellowness that comes from leaving the beer unfiltered. The price is 770 yen for a 330-millilitre serving. It will be interesting to see what individuality a brewery in a small Japanese town brings out while taking European beer culture as its model.

For readers in Europe, it may be difficult to get hold of this brewery’s beer straight away. Even so, how Belgian and German styles are interpreted in rural Japan becomes clearer when compared with the familiar witbier. The softness characteristic of an unfiltered white beer and differences in how the hop aroma is brought out look like useful points of comparison. What flavour the standard beer eventually settles on is also something to watch in the months ahead.