Kujukuri Ocean Beer Weizen is a 5% hefeweizen from the Chiba Triangle, the Area X of Kanto, the only place I know with a number for a name, Kujukuri beach! Been there yet, guys? To the SARDINE MUSEUM?! (Only three reviews in and I’m seriously scraping the bottom of the mash tun to hit my word count on these beers here. Would it surprise you to know that Kujukuri doesn’t have the most robust internet presence? They probably shut down their website at night)
Kujukuri Ocean Beer Weizen Aroma and Taste
Kujukuri Ocean Beer Weizen whispers out of the bottle with barely a molecule of carbonation – the centimetre of toothpaste foam you can see in the photo remained just a slightly longer amount of time than the Higgs Boson does. It also has a slightly hazy appearance and a golden colour (no surprises there- shall I tell you that it comes in a bottle too?). Giving it a whiff, there was a strong meaty smell from the wheat which wasn’t particularly appetising.
Tasting this weizen gave me a mouthful of banana armageddon – bananageddon, if you will- from the esters in the beer. The bready wheatiness was very light, and the hops appeared to have been merely waved in front of the bottle instead of actually added to the beer. This was a very weak tasting beer, and the bananosity was all there was to it.
Kujukuri Ocean Beer Weizen: The Bottom Line
The weakest of the three Kujukuri Ocean Beers I’ve reviewed so far, don’t even give this one a second glance. Nothing going on here, folks.
Where to Buy Kujukuri Ocean Beer Weizen
Kujukuri Ocean Beer Weizen can be bought online at the following places:
Joe’s Final Thought (a.k.a getting up that word count)
Well, I’m done with Kankiku for now. And thank god. Just one last thing, though- Take a look at Kankiku Shuzo’s beer lineup. Notice anything? Apart from the stout, why is every beer 5% ABV? And it’s not only Kankiku. A large percentage of the older generation breweries do it too. Why is the baseline for beer ABV always 5% in Japan?
Traditional ales in England had their ABVs all over the place, from as low as 2% to as high as about 7% (too strong and you’ll be too drunk to stay in the pub all night complaining about your terrible wife Mavis and your eighteen children), and everything in between.
Every bloody beer in Japan seems to hover around 5% regardless of style, which has led to some amusing occurrences- I’ve seen so-called “session” beers next to regular beers (both 5%, of course), and who can forget Suntory’s mind-flayingly terrible Craft Select Imperial Stout, with a whopping 6%? Good riddance to that one.
Anyway, with the relatively modern idea of the beer style determining what kind of ABV the brewer aims for, we can see a better variety in our ABVs from craft brewers in Japan. Meanwhile Big Beer is still lost in its own madness- anyone seen the advert for a happoshu that boasts “three times the malt”? Yeah, can’t wait to try that 15% ABV happoshu.
If anyone could shed some light on the 5% ABV phenomenon I’d love to know!
