Touring the Asahi Brewery

Asahi Tour
Asahi Tour

A couple of years ago, my fiance and I visited a friend in Japan.  One of the highlights of our trip was visiting the Asahi Brewery in Fukuoka, the Hakata Brewery.

It was here where I learned a bit more about the process of brewing, where malted grain is put into heated water for a certain amount of time, to allow the starch in the grain to convert to sugar by enzymes.  This liquid, called wort (pronounced wert), is then boiled, and the hops are added.  Once boiled for a certain amount of time, the wort is cooled, then the yeast is added, and the conversion to beer takes place.  An amusing comic by The Oatmeal shows this process (and other interesting things about beer).

The great thing about the Asahi brewery is that you actually got to taste and smell the ingredients used in the process.  We saw the empty kegs, the brewing room, and the bottling line.  We also learned that the breweries employed sensory experts who would randomly test samples for consistency.  The tour was a great learning experience.

Once the tour was over, we had the complimentary tasting, and I was hooked.  We then saw Asahi Super Dry everywhere.  It was on tap at the restaurants, the karaoke lounges, and there were even vendors walking around the Japanese baseball game with 10 liter (around 3 gallon) kegs strapped to their backs, dispensing the beer.

To this day, Asahi Super Dry is my favorite Japanese beer, and is definitely one of my favorite lagers because the flavor is very clean, and you can taste the quality of the ingredients.  But maybe that’s just me recalling the taste of the ingredients on the tour.

Have you tried Asahi Super Dry?  What did you think?