Everyday, the world is getting smaller. We have access to different people, places and cultures today that we didn't even know existed only 50 years ago. Take tonight for example; my friend Chris is going to visit his family in Ecuador, so we're going to dinner at a Japanese restaurant to see him off. The world has become so small that eating sushi in southern California with friends from South America no longer seems like such a strange thing. I was thinking about how much the world seems to be shrinking everyday, and it made me think about how brewing has changed over the last hundred years. In Europe, beer had been brewed regionally for thousands of years with little to no change in the recipes. However, as global demand for beer steadily increased in the twentieth century, so too did the variety of beers being produced. Suddenly you had American breweries producing German style lagers, or English breweries making Belgian ale as a common practice. I can think of few other industries in the world that have embraced the different customs of countries from every part of the world the way that the brewing industry has. Kirin Ichiban is my beer for tonight, and is perhaps the greatest example of cross-cultural success in the beer business.
In the 19th century, Japan was still a great mystrery to most westerners. For years it had resisted allowing outsiders to immigrate to their country, but finally relented in the latter part of the century. One adventurous young man who chose to try his luck in the east was a Norwegian man named William Copeland (A.K.A. Johan Martinius Thoresen). After living in America for a brief period and changing his name for Thoresen to Copeland, he set off for Yokohama in 1864 where he soon became a naturalized Japanese citizen. Copeland started up several business ventures with meager success, when one day he realized that there were no breweries in Japan. There was a great demand for exported beers, but for some reason there were no domestic Japanese beers at the time. Copeland founded Spring Valley Brewery in 1869 and while he did enjoy success in the Japanese market, a series of personal misfortunes and plain bad luck sent Copeland back to America in 1884, closing down the Spring Valley Brewery.
Spring Valley Brewery didn't sit vacant for long before two Englishmen, W.H. Talbot and E. Abbot took notice and found Japanese investors to partner up with them and found The Japan Brewing Company. Soon the company began to flourish under the guidance of the Europeans who had saved the brewery, but by 1907 the brewery had been purchased by the Mitsubishi company and all of the English, German, and American employees were soon replaced by Japanese workers. To this day, Kirin Ichiban is one of Japan's top beers and does particularly well as an export in America. It's absolutely fascinating to me to think about how the most sucessful Japanese beer of all time got it's start from Norwegian, English and American brewers. If there is a beer that's crossed more cultural lines than Kirin Ichiban has, I have yet to find it.
But how does it taste, you ask? As much as I love the story behind this beer and would love to report that it is an amazing drink, the truth is that Kirin Ichiban leaves a lot to be desired. There really isn't much to this beer; almost no head to speak of, pale straw color, thin and dry mouth feel, almost a grassy hay flavor to it. Kirin Ichiban has done nothing groundbreaking with their recipe, but that might be the key to their success. Surprisingly enough, some of the world's most successful beers are also the blandest and Kirin tops the list. If you want to impress your friends with a clever story about the origin of your beer however, the tale of Kirin Ichiban is sure to do the trick. You can find this beer in virtually every major grocery store in America and increasingly in many bars and restaurants, and not just Asian restaurants anymore. Try it for yourself.
Kampai!
Ian
www.kirin.com
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