Blue Beer from Hokkaido Japan

Japanese Blue Beer

One of the bigger supermarkets around here (Hankyu) is having a Hokkaido Fair at the moment with speciality food and craft beers from the region.

Hokkaido, for those that don’t know, is the northern most of the 4 main Japan islands, where Sapporo Beer is from (Sapporo city is kind of the capital of Hokkaido). I haven’t visited there yet, but it’s famous for it’s snow, beautiful scenery, nature and sushi.

My wife picked up two of the craft beers for me the other day, the Yubari Coal Mine Black Beer and the bizarre Ryuhyou Draft Okhotsk Blue which is a BLUE happoshu from Abashiri Brewery.

Ryuhyou　in Japanese is 流氷 which means Drift Ice, and to be honest I don’t know if it’s made with drift ice water or it’s just some marketing thing.

Unfortunately, despite the colour, it’s just a disappointing happoshu with a fairly chemical taste. Full marks for trying though. Click the image below for a full review.