Today I heard from Kathy S., an expatriate of Cazenovia (where I currently live). Kathy lives in Tokyo and mentioned that she had been on a recent tour of Suntory; she referred me to this great breakdown of Suntory's facility in The Blog From Another Dimension. Kathy also wrote:
It's all very high tech, but they do have some of their older equipment on display too. The kids all loved chewing on samples of the malt that is used and crinkled their noses appropriately at the "aroma" of the hop pellets which the lovely guide passed around in a clear plastic container. Although the northern island, Hokkaido, produces hops, Suntory uses hops grown and processed into pellets in Europe. Some of the Japanese men on our tour were grilling the guide about this, but I think Hokaido just can't produce enough hops for all the beer in Japan and Suntory was happy with the quality of their supply.Posted by jimj at September 15, 2005 09:39 AM | TrackBack
The Suntory Brewery tour was certainly fancier than the Utica Club tour I took back in 5th grade, when I couldn't taste the wares legally anyway, but it was fun to reminisce about the less automated local brewery while sampling Suntory's brews.