Yokohama Beer Fes

Dunno. Better drink it and find out.

September 17 saw me and mine meeting up with an old Portland-by-way-of- Japan friend Yoshi (and his lil' man-cub Shinji, shown below) at Dai-san Hall in Yokohama for the 2011 Yokohama Beer Fes. Don't ask me what a Fes is, but I think it might be a 3-hour piss-up (or 'rager' if you will) attended by several hundred beer-starved maniacs in a Herbert-Hoover-esque airplane hangar full of delicious craft beer. I'm only guessing though.

Photos.

A happy festival-goer? Or a psychotic about to chew your face off and wash it down with two swallows of beer?

Perusing the offerings from Ise Kadoya

Experts agree: beer is kind of brown and liquidy

Shiga Kogen, a fine JP brewer, but this one was a bit dry. Recommend their Imperial Red.

Me doing some sleight-of-hand with the missus. (Not the kind you're thinking, look at the picture!)

Three men and a baby

OK, 'men' might not quite describe us at this point in the evening. Little Shinji ended up driving us home.

This event was a blast, and I was really impressed by the quality of the suds JP is putting out these days. There were a couple that were kind of on the meh side, and one that I tried that was clearly off, but all in all JP brewers were in top form. If you get a chance to try 'Liebe' by Shonan, please do. It's a black lager, not a style that I particularly run to, nor a brewery that I can say I've heard much about, but this brew was really, really nice. It was super clean and fresh, pitch-black, and had just enough of a hint of roast while still letting the other lagery flavors come out. A testament to some brewer's bad-ass mashing skills.

Speaking to bad-ass mashing, got a redo of Triple C Pale in the works (brewed it today actually--ha! I just busted the bubble of disbelief!), and I'm gonna--get this--mash HOTTER! Whoa. But first... Check the Drill-Mill-Grill-Grinderer. Up next.