I blogged before about the recent release of
Chcolate Beers in Japan for Valentines Day and in, I guess, true Japanese style my wife bought me some more for this years Valentines.


There’s the Imperial Stout from Minoh Brewery, which actually has a pink heart on the label and “St. Valentines Day” on the label, as well as Doppo Brewery’s “White Chocolate” beer from Okayama.
It’s a very drinkable fruit beer (I didn’t get much chccolatey taste on it), and to be honest it was more like a flat, weak orangeade than a beer – but don’t let that put you off!
It’s definitely worth trying.


I also tried another stout from Minoh Brewery,
the Minoh Beer Stout, which technically doesn’t have anything to do with the recent Valentines beers, but is being sold alongside them so why not.

This stout recently won the Worlds Best Stout award at the World Beer Awards in the UK – although to be honest, I didn’t like it much, but I’m not much of a stout drinker anyway.


There’s a very good blog post about Minoh Brewery at Beerinjapan.com – here

Well, it appears the merger talks between Kirin Holdings and Suntory Holdings have broken down.

What could have been one of the biggest drinks company in the world “Kirin Suntory” has come to nothing.

Basically it seems the Suntory family who own 90% of the Suntory shares were demanding a larger portion of the new share allotment, over one third of the new companies shares, so they would have the power of veto over important decisions at board meetings.

Not entirely sure if any of this is of any interest to beer drinkers or general consumers as odds on things would have just carried on as normal anyway, but who knows.

It’s highly unlikely they would have changed any of their beers or beer styles anyway.


One of the best Kirin beers (in my opinion) is the seasonal Kirin Aki Aji which came out last autumn.

Suntory’s best is another seasonal beer, the Suntory Kohaku No Zeitaku (The Luxury of Amber) which came out last winter.

Recently I blogged about the Sapporo/Royce Chocolate beer for Valentines day and there seems to be a spate of other chocolate based beers and cocktails released this year in Japan.

Recently I found this Chocolat Cocktail from Asahi which is a Rum and Chocolate based cocktail.

I bought it initially for my wife as she likes sweet cocktails, but she didn’t want it, so after leaving it in the fridge for a couple of weeks I finally took the plunge and tried it (the fridge was otherwise bare).

Very surprised and impressed!

Basically a chocolate milkshake with a hint of rum on the aftertaste (although rum is the main ingredient according to the can, the cocktail is only 4% and hardly tastes of rum at all).

Haven’t seen any other chocolate cocktails but am still trying to find the other chocolate beers , Chocolate No. 7, Chocolate Doppu, and White Chocolate from Doppu.


The full review is here: Asahi Chocolat Cocktail

Prompted by the large number of injuries due to fights in pubs and bars in England (some 87,000 alcohol related glass attacks a year!), the shatterproof pint glass has been unveiled this week in Britain.

There are two types, one designed not to break at all (it has a protective coating on the inside) and the other has two thin layers of glass bonded together to prevent shattering, in the same was as windshields.

Apparently half of all violent assaults in Britain are due to alcohol and you’re 5 times more likely to be in a fight or attacked in or around a bar.

Although the new glasses don’t shatter, you could, if you so desired, hit someone over the head with them as a club.


You don’t see many drunken fights in Japan, or maybe I just don’t hang around the “right/wrong” areas. I have seen a couple of drunken salary man have a slapping match on the train station though.

Well, not much of a slapping match, the older man was slapping the younger mans face and in a remarkable show of deference to age and seniority, the younger man just stood there and took it.
I wondered at the time if the old guy was the other’s boss.

Still this is quite rare, at least from what I’ve seen in Kansai.


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They have this thing they do in Japan after New Years, called Lucky Bags.

Basically, shops, etc make up bags full of stuff which they sell for anything from ￥1000-￥100,000 or more. I read somewhere that this year one firm was selling 2 bags for over a millions that included a robot that they would build that would look just like the purchaser!

Anyway, basically the idea is, you don’t know what’s in the bag, but it’s supposed to be better value – I saw one for in a department store for 2 bottles of wine for ￥10,000 but the value of wines was ￥15,000.
You get the idea.

Digging through some old photos on my pc, I found this from last years which was a Lucky Bag I bought at Nishinomiyha Ebisu Festival from an off-license there.

Four cans of Asahi lager, a beer glass, some curry, some tissues and oddly…some clingfilm.
All for ￥1000 ($10).