Kyufuku Brewing Honjima : At a Glance
- Opened : November 2022
- Japanese name : 久福ブルーイング本島
- Location : Honjima, Marugame, Kagawa
- First beer : 2022
- Head brewer : Kubota Kohei (久保田宏平)
- Homepage : https://kyu-fuku.com
Table of Contents
Kyufuku Brewing Honjima : Background
Tucked away on Honjima, a small island in Kagawa Prefecture’s Seto Inland Sea, Kyufuku Brewing Honjima is about as far removed from Japan’s big-city craft beer scene as you can get. Located in the Shiwaku Islands, just west of the Seto Ohashi Bridge, Honjima is a quiet island with a population of only a few hundred people. It is perhaps better known for its history, traditional houses and maritime heritage than for beer, but that is precisely what makes Kyufuku such an interesting brewery.
The brewery is run by a husband-and-wife team who decided to make Honjima their home and converted a former shop on the island into a small brewery. The building had previously served as part of the local community, and its conversion into a brewery gave an unused space a new purpose while creating a new reason for visitors to make the journey across the Seto Inland Sea. Kyufuku Brewing officially opened in November 2022.
Honjima has a long connection with craftsmanship. During the Edo and Meiji periods, the island was home to the Shiwaku Daiku, highly skilled shipwrights and carpenters who worked on vessels travelling throughout the Seto Inland Sea. Reminders of this maritime heritage can still be seen around the island, giving Kyufuku’s location a sense of history that is rather different from the industrial surroundings of many urban Japanese breweries.
The brewery itself takes a deliberately small-scale approach to brewing. Each batch is produced in relatively small quantities, with around 300 litres brewed at a time, allowing the brewers to experiment with different recipes and ingredients rather than concentrating on high-volume production.
One of the most interesting aspects of Kyufuku’s philosophy is its attitude towards variation. Every batch is given its own number, reflecting the idea that beer is a living, fermented product rather than something that can be expected to taste exactly the same every time. Even when the same recipe is used, differences in temperature, weather, yeast and brewing conditions can influence the finished beer. Rather than trying to eliminate those differences, Kyufuku embraces them as part of what makes craft beer interesting.
The brewery also looks to the Setouchi region for inspiration, using local ingredients where possible and creating beers that fit naturally into the island environment. Sitting inside a converted shop with views across the calm waters of the Seto Inland Sea, Kyufuku Brewing feels less like a conventional commercial brewery and more like an extension of island life.
For visitors, that is part of the appeal. Getting to Kyufuku requires making the trip to Honjima, but the brewery offers something that is increasingly difficult to find in Japan’s craft beer scene: genuinely small-scale brewing, closely connected to its surroundings. Each numbered batch is a little snapshot of the island, the season and the brewers who made it, making Kyufuku Brewing Honjima a particularly fitting example of Setouchi craft beer.
Kyufuku Brewing Honjima : Beer Reviews
The following are some of the beers we’ve had:
- Kyufuku Brewing Honjima : Roundup – rather than write about the beers individually, the collection of the draft beers we had can be found here.
Kyufuku Brewing Honjima : Articles
The following are some of the articles we’ve done:
- Kyufuku Beer Stand (Marugame / Kagawa) – a short write up about their taproom in the city of Marugame in Kagawa.
Kyufuku Brewing Honjima : Details
- Address : 704-2 Tomari, Honjima-cho, Marugame, Kagawa 763-0223
- Phone : –
- Homepage : https://kyu-fuku.com/
- Online store : https://shop-kyufuku.square.site/
- Social Media : Instagram
