Barreal – ￥88 Fake Beer from Aeon

With the on-coming onslaught of the unbearably humid Japanese summer Beer manufacturers in Japan are finding ways to maximise their sales, and big supermarket chain Aeon recently launched a ￥88 ($1) daisan (beer-like drink) onto the market.

Tax on alcohol is (compared to say the UK) very cheap, with whiskeys and other spirits in off-licenses being usually around half the price of English prices, but due to the strange Japanese beer tax system where the tax relates to the amont of malt in the beer, canned beer itself can be quite expensive.

So in Japan you get Happoshu (second category beer), which uses less malt and Daisan (third category beer) which uses the smallest amount, sometimes none. These have less tax and so are a lot cheaper.

The Barreal from Aeon is the cheapest yet.

A table I found in the Asahi Shinbun compares average prices of beers and beer-type driinks in Japan…

	Big Brands	Price per 350ml Can
Premium Beer	Suntory The Premium Malts, Yebisu	￥255 ($2.50)
Beer	Kirin Ichiban Shibori, Asahi Super Dry	￥215 ($2.10)
Happoshu	Asahi Style Free, Kirin Tanrei	￥160 ($1.60)
Daisan Beer	Kirin’s Nodogoshi Nama, Clear Asahi, Suntory Kinmugi, Mugi and Hops	￥140 ($1.40)
Value Daisan	Barreal	￥88 ($1)

I haven’t yet tried the Aeon Barreal but not holding my breath on in it being a worthwhile try.

There’s a good article about this new daisan on the Wall Street Journal “Japan Real Time” site, where I also discovered that a study by the Brewery Association of Japan shows that 45% of the beer retail price is tax! That’s pretty shocking.

Related posts on MoIppai

• Style Free Beer From Japan
• Beerlike drinks in Japan hit new low price
• So Just What is Happoshu Anyway?
• Asahi Breweries Back On Top