There?s an old joke about American beer, but it applies equally in Japan.
Q: Why is Japanese beer like having sex in a canoe"
A: They?re both fucking close to water.
This tells you what you need to know about most Japanese beers. The industry is dominated by the ?big four? lagers, Asahi, Kirin, Sapporo and Suntory, which are uniformly dull and largely indistinguishable. Not actively unpleasant, and often just the thing on a hot summer?s eve, but hard to get excited about when you know that?s what you?ll be offered at ninety five percent of shops and restaurants in the country. I can?t really do any better than the late, great beer writer Michael Jackson?s assessment of Asahi when he said ?It is very difficult to make a beer this tasteless?. Japanese craft beer: celebrating diversity since 1994! (Dogo beer, Matsuyama, Ehime Prefecture)

Japanese people who don?t know any better will declare passionately for the superiority of Asahi over Kirin, or vice versa, but it?s like arguing about which of four shades of grey is the most exciting; it ignores the fantastic Technicolor world that is out there for anyone who cares to look.
Since 1994 there has been steady growth in the Japanese craft beer market, at first only known by a handful of enthusiasts, but now encroaching on the mainstream day by day. The catalyst for this was the liberalization of the Japanese alcohol production laws; previously it had only been legal to produce beer commercially if you make more than two mi...