Brewing in Japan

[John_Henry]

Hi all. I just moved to Japan a few weeks ago, and to my horror have discovered that it is illegal to do pretty much any home brewing. From what I can gather it seems the big breweries are keeping the market tightly sealed. Not to be put off, I'm now thinking of taking them on and up scaling.

The main problem is (besides red tape) that the minimum requirement of production in Japan is 60 kilo litres a year. Yes you read it right, the 'Minimum' requirement. So basically not much craft beer in Japan, and no home brewing. You see quite a lot of so called 'craft beer' but from what I've tried the vast majority are over priced slosh you wouldn't give them a thank you for. To boot the tax is pretty high at 220 yen per litre, so tax alone on the 60,000 litres is in the region of £100,000.

Before I moved to Japan I was thinking of up scaling a little and thinking about the possibilities of opening a bar with a micro brewery, but I never envisaged anything like 60,000 litres. I love my home brewing, but have only ever brewed small quantities, so it would be a big leap. I am very tempted to look into starting a brewery over here but have no real idea of costs. If I were to go for it I would obviously seek professional advice, but I was hoping some of you chaps might be able to give me a ruff idea of the cost involved. Any advice would be appreciated, and if anyone knows any loop holes for the home brewing that would be good too.

 

[pittsy]

hi , good luck with your brewing and i hope it works out for you :

 

[John_Henry]

hi , good luck with your brewing and i hope it works out for you :

Cheers

 

[John_Henry]

Went to speak to a business adviser yesterday, and they said it is pretty tough to get any sort of licence for brewing in Japan and takes quite a long time. I'm starting to think it makes more sense just to brew in the UK and import good brews to Japan.

 

[hedgerow pete]

or a brew shed with no windows. i lived for many years in the middle east and africa and we had never a problem with brewing alc., garden seed grains are easily imported or found so is the garden flower hops :nono: :twisted:

 

[John_Henry]

From a little more research it seems you can get home brew supplies quite easily, and from what I can see there isn't much of a problem if your only brewing small quantities for personal consumption.

 

[Vossy1]

Moved over to this forum as more relevant section :thumb:
Sounds like you might be o.k brewing small amounts J_H
There are threads on the forum regards starting up and costs in the U.K, nothing so far away though. One of our members has just started a brewing forum in Thailand, nothing about starting a brewery but I would imagine supply 'issues' are the same.