Home Beer Review Romantic Village Mugi Jiro by Romantic Village Beer

Romantic Village Mugi Jiro by Romantic Village Beer

by BeerTengoku Writer
4 comments

Romantic Village Mugi Jiro is a 6% all-malt beer from Romantic Village Beer based in Utsunomiya. Some places have it labelled as a premium lager (urgh hate using that title) but it is in fact a German style pilsner. The yeast itself used for Romantic Village Mugi Jiro comes from the Jiro strain of barley from the local area.

Romantic Village Mugi Jiro

Not a premium lager thankfully but a pilsner instead.

Romantic Village Mugi Jiro Aroma and Taste

When I read that Romantic Village Mugi Jiro was supposedly a “premium lager”, buzzwords and dodgy PR came to mind. After reading Joe’s rant about buzzwords, anytime I see the word premium on a label of craft beer I immediately shake with restrained fury at the design. What is premium beer? Why is premium beer better than a non-premium beer if they both use the same ingredients? Besides the price of ¥500+, what does make this beer premium?

Romantic Village Mugi Jiro poured out a golden straw-like colour with a pure white head on top, though it was minimal to say the least. If I were to get this in a bar, then I would be delighted with that amount of head as it means more beer for my money but out of bottle isn’t good. The wheat and malts coming off of it were weak and could barely be detected, and the hops, well, they didn’t even register on my sensitive nose. Disappointing really.

The crisp texture of Romantic Village Mugi Jiro gets you from the from sip. It was refreshingly dry and the malts brought some semblance of sweetness to the taste along with the hops bringing a little bit of bitterness to the finish.  Not much else went on during drinking and I couldn’t help but feel like I had been had by the premium label.

Romantic Village Mugi Jiro One Review

Romantic Village Mugi Jiro is drinkable enough but nothing outstanding.

Where to Buy Romantic Village Mugi Jiro

Romantic Village Mugi Jiro can be bought from the following places:

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4 comments

Christopher Phillips October 26, 2015 - 8:09 pm

ive neverbeen impressed by them. last time i hit the brewery was about 4 years back and everything was meh to disgusting. you try the gyouza beer yet?
THeir new series of ipas show they are tryign and some like them but they do nothing for me.

Reply
Rob October 26, 2015 - 8:16 pm

Had it. Disliked it a lot. A real mess of a beer that I can’t imagine drinking let alone pair with gyoza.

Reply
pudgym29 November 8, 2015 - 12:01 pm

The appellation "premium" is an infrequently seen (today) classification of where its brewery sees it in its marketing scheme.
If you belong to a breweriana society, you’ll see it much more frequently in older ads.
I’ll give an example of how this squares. I’ll use Anheuser-Busch {please excuse me} as it.
Busch brand has 70% malt. It is its popular brand.
Budweiser brand has 80% malt. It is its premium brand.
Michelob brand has 90% malt. It is its super-premium brand.
On-premise, each beer is likely priced the same. Off-premise [i.e.: to take away], there could remain a price differential between all three brands, with the popular brand costing the least.

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Rob November 8, 2015 - 9:05 pm

True but then when you have the same company brewing beers that all contain 100% malt then you have to wonder where does the premium part come into it?

Is it the kind of malts that are being used e.g. floor malted vs. kiln malted? Hops? The freshest pick of the bunch or hops left over from a couple of years ago? So many factors that come into it that are rather misleading for the consumer.

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