Green beer is a staple of St. Patrick’s Day, much to the chagrin of the Irish. White beers, amber beers and dark beers are all pretty common, but blue beer? Thought that was just a one-off kind of thing. We’ve got blueberries, blue fins, bluegills, bluegrass, blue balls, blueprints and blue men. Blue beer is not all that common, and unless you live in Hokkaido (or are a curious internet shopper) you probably haven’t tried it either. Fear not! While the Ryuhyo Draft reviews were not all that positive, a Kirin beer garden in Tokyo wants you to sample their blue beer until the end of July!
One might wonder why Kirin chose the color blue to feature in their limited time summer beer drink. Then you look around and see the massive amounts of paraphernalia for the Japanese soccer team, Samurai Blue. Blue seems to be the most obvious answer to the question, “what color do we turn our food into so that it sells more in the next two months?” Plenty of companies are opting to just change their packaging to blue, but others are going the extra mile.
Enter Kirin’s blue beer featuring frozen foam! Note the decorative soccer ball added.
The first thing you will have to get through is the frozen foam. If you are expecting an ice cream or whipped cream like taste, you are in for a surprise. The frozen foam is bitter! Who knew that frozen beer would be so bitter?!? A bitter beer is exactly what you want on a hot and humid day (aka every day in the summer in Japan) so once you get over the surprise of bitter foam, it really matches the surroundings.
On a hot day though, all you want to do is gulp down some cold refreshing beer. While the ice-cold frozen foam is nice, it kind of forms a barrier between you and the delicious beer underneath. Once you get past it though, you are able to enjoy a nice refreshing beer with a surprise lurking on the bottom! Strangely, the bottom of the beer had a really sweet taste; it comes out of nowhere, like the filling in a hard candy! Rarely does a beer have three different tastes in it – this truly is a unique beer! And for those who don’t like really bitter or sweet beers, the Kirin beer garden offers their standard selection of brews.
Like most things in Japan, this beer will only be around until the beginning of July. Lucky for you though, the Kirin Ichiban Shibori Garden Tokyo Brewery Experience is open every day.
Here’s their menu! (Japanese Only)
Information:
Name: Kirin Ichiban Shibori Garden Tokyo Brewery Experience
Address: Tokyo, Shibuya-ku, Udagawa-cho 3-7
Time: 16:00 – 23:00, Saturday-Sunday 12:00 – 23:00
Holidays: None (open every day till the beginning of July)
Images: RocketNews24
[ Read in Japanese ]