A Happy Neｗ Year 2020!

　Happy New Year to y'all!
We started new year with a lot of hope and peaces.

　We wish it will become a great and healthy year to everyone. 

We will OPEN on Monday too.

The weather changes a lot recently.

We brewed the first batch of this year today.

We  will open our bottle shop until Monday this week.

The time is 12:00-19:00 as usual.

On Sunday, We will make MISO at car space of the brewery with customers.

So please be careful when parking.

The picture is hops for today's batch.
The hops are aged for a year. So the color turns sepia green by oxidation.
But smells good.

The Winter is a season for wild brews for us.
We are exited about it.
Have a nice weekend!

A Happy New Year!

　Happy new year to all!
　
　We wish your 2019 will become a great year.
　And We hope our beer will be so too.

  Cheers!

　

　　

Kawamura Memorial DIC museum of Art

　We really appreciate everyone who went to the KADARUBE Craft beer festival.
   The event was postponed because of a typhoon but we were glad to hear that it was well attended.

　We will be at another event in November.
 The details are coming soon!

　　　♪　　　　　　　♪　　　　　　♪　　　　　　　♪　　　　　　　♪

   We went to Kawamura Memorial DIC Museum of Art last week.
This is a great museum in Chiba pref., so I want come here over and over again.

There are few customers and it is peacefully silent.
Some swans and ducks were in the pond just like a fairy tail.
There is also a park where you can see some big art works too.

This museum was opened in 1990.
The presidents of this ink company collected the works of great artists of the 20th century, including Picasso, Monet, Rembrandt and American artists in recent years.

We love to see the works of Picasso, Pissaro or Renoir.
And we loved a new room displaying only 2 works of Cy Twombly called "Twombly room".

Our favorite is the "Rothko room" where you can see seven works of Mark Rothko.

We felt the power and enjoyment of the arts.

♪　　　　　　　♪　　　　　　♪

We visited a peanut shop called "Masuda" after the museum.
Yotsukaido city is famous for peanuts and it is harvest season.
You can see the peanuts drying on road. 

There are so many places we want to visit in this area.

We will visit them next time.

≪ Kawamura Memorial DIC Museum of Art ≫

　Address : Sakato 631 Sakura City, CHIBA
　Business Hour : 9：30-17：00
　Closed: Monday（Open on holiday and close on next day of the holiday）

New beers and handmade brooms.

The typhoon passed through and the temperature went down a little bit.

This summer is really really hot...

Please take care of yourself and have a nice summer vacation.

We released new beers for summer!

　♪ MOTUEKA PALE ALE … We usually brew this beer for spring but we brewed one more batch for the summer. The Motueka hops flavor also match summer season. We had used malted wheat much more than other batches.  The taste get  better and fresher.（5％）

　♪ SUMMER PORTER … Light dark beer like a cold brew coffee in the summer afternoon.  You can enjoy it slowly of its roasty aroma and malt flavor with low carbonation. （4.5％）

　　　♪                            ♪　　　　　　　　　　♪　　　　　　　　　♪

　

　We visited the farmer who is growing broom cypress in Sodegaura city.

Our friend is a creator of handmade brooms and he has general shop near our brewery.

 They called us to see the farm. Sodegaura city is a good place for broom cypress. 

　

　

   This is the Broom cypress.　It has seeds like rice.
　The man who creates brooms,  showed us how to crop the cypress rhythmically.
　

　One broom needs about 100 cypress.
  The cypress grown in Sodegaura city is finer quality than other places.
  Soft and thickly bearded cypress are good for made brooms. he said.
  Several farmers are growing cypress for him.

　　He creates very beautiful brooms. They are very tough and the floor gets clean and shine if you sweep with this. And I love to use it. He makes many types of brooms.

      He said he loves brooms so much. So he could keep on creating brooms for 60 years. Some materials for make brooms are in shortage like rattan and wire year by year. But he always create brooms or other things and his wife works in the shop.

　　The real craftsman shop a 5 minutes walk from the brewery.
   Please visit there if you like brooms.

Floods in Western Japan.

We were very saddened to hear about the earthquake in Osaka, and torrential rain and floods in Western Japan.

 We watch the news about the rain right after the news about earthquake in Osaka. And now weather is changing to extremely hot.
The weather news says it will be really high temperature whole area of Japan in this weekend. Please take care of yourself.

Ume beer. 9th June will be closed.

The rainy season has set in.

Hydrangeas in my yard are getting more beautiful in the rain.

  I love those colors.

 We couldn't harvest enough cherries and loquats for beer this season.
 The fruits got scratched so we couldn't use it.
 Instead, we picked a few for desserts.
 The freshness and sunlight gives a perfect taste.

We harvested a lot of Japanese apricots / ume this year.

It grows well every year. We usually use it for ume-boshi, a kind of pickles.

But we used them for the beer too.

We have two kinds of ume trees. A small ume tree and big ume tree. 

We used small ume for the beer because we prefer the smell of it.

Its taste will become sour by the acidity of ume.  We hope it will be nice.

　We will release Summer Porter from this week.

  There are 5 kinds of beer on the shelf.

　

  It is a low carbonated Belgian porter. It's roasty but not bitter and

 good for a hot and humid day.

Blueberry and Raspberry will be in season soon.

Check the local farmer's market if you visit Chiba.

Enjoy your weekend!

　

　≪ Infomation ≫

　We will close our bottle shop on 9th June.
Sorry for the inconvenience.　

New beers.

 We open our bottle shop as always, 12:00~19:00,Fri/Sat/Sun.

 Our previous camera was broken, so we bought new one, strted using today.

 We have 4 kinds of beer this week. Blonde and Wheat are back on the shelf!

 We also have new beers for this season.

 ♪ Summer Orange and Ginger … We used local summer orange and Ginger to brew this wheat beer. We also used some local unmalted wheat, so beer is cloudy.

For summer orange we try to buy from the same person every year. we asked her let oranges on the tree as long as possible. we used whole oranges, meaning not only peel, but juice and white pith. This beer has citrusy (zesty) aroma, a touch of sourness, dry-ginger taste, of course Belgian yeast notes...and so on.

 We made this beautiful label !!

 The label was based on a top of the mountain in Kimitsu-city and our customer, who likes to go there by bike. Kaii Higashiyama got his inspiration for his "Afterglow" from the same mountain. Summer Orange tree is imaginary. This picture is not only about beautiful mountains but the friendship between our customer and his bicycle.

 The other new beer is

 ♪ Le Orage… The name means "Lightning" in French. This Belgian brown ale has firm maltiness, but a little bit more bitter than usual belgian brown ale to make it dry enough for the warm weather.

 We will attend Sangyo-sai in Anegasaki,Ichihara on 20th.

 Our bottle shop will be open as usual, too.

 Enjoy your weekend !

 We cleaned and repainted our signboard.
 It's much better now!!

Back from Kyoto

 We passed many mountains and rivers, and we came back to Kisarazu from Kyoto last night.

  We traveled for 4 days. It has been longer than we expected because we visited some people on the road.

   It rained a lot during Kyoto craft beer festa, unfortunately .
 However, The event was crowded all day long.

 We thank everyone involved in the event.

 We had many people come to our place and said "we heard about Songbird from......" We are very grateful that we felt supported even in Kyoto.

 We did some chores today....
 We found some of our vegetables in the garden were eaten by bugs, wondering if we re-plant some or not. we will go back to be normal little by little.

Schedule of Golden Week.

　I could see the rice fields had irrigated for rice planting.
  And some fields are planted already.

    Big holidays called Golden Week will start from this weekend.
  It will be nice weather.

   We will announce schedule of holidays.
 OPEN hours is 12:00 ~ 19:00.

　　APR   27（fri）　　　　OPEN　
　　　　   28（sat）　　　　OPEN　　
　　　　   29（sun）　　　　OPEN
　　　　  30  (mon）　　　　OPEN

　　MAY　1（tue）　　　　CLOSED
　　　　   2（wed）　　　　CLOSED

　　　  　3日（thu）　　　　OPEN
　　　　  4日（fri）　　　　OPEN
　　　　  5日（sat）　　　　OPEN
　　　　  6日（sun）　　　　OPEN
　　
　　　Same as calendar.
　　　And we will closed our bottle shop MAY 12 and 13
        for Ji-Beer fes Kyoto 2018.

          We will release some new beer used local fruits.　
        These are good for holiday and early summer.

          Please visit Chiba to see the flowers and nice rural scenery.
　　　 Enjoy your holidays♪　　　　

The sounds of flowers.

Flowers blooming everywhere. It's Spring. 

We put away our room heater.

We can hear of birds sing louder and louder day by day.

The grass gets taller and taller and I mowed it for the first time this year.

It is the best season to enjoy gardening.

Asparagus!! It is our favorite spring vegetable.
It has been 4 years since we planted it.

The cherry trees.

We can't wait to eat them.

　　　　

It is a kind of azalea. I'm looking forward to seeing those flowers.

A gorgeous Peony flower.

I accidentally cut off its stalk last year.
But it became big and bloomed again.

Poppies and garlic.
The seeds of poppy flow to our garden and spread so quickly.　
I love poppy but not too many.

　This is a lemon tree which is 3 years old.

I cut down a big tree near it so it could get more sunshine.　
I hope it grows bigger.

I had such a nice time enjoying the garden.
Have a nice holiday too!

Thank you !!

We don't have much stock of beer and only two kinds of beer in the shop now.
Sorry for we haven't updated our blog too.
BLONDE is ready to sell and there are 3 kinds of beer in the shop now.

　

We finished brewing of our wild beer by the end of March.
We brewed 3 times in this season.
The beer is fermented with wild yeast caught from the air.
And it will ferment for a long time.
We hope it will be a good one.

We spend our time brewing our regular line and bottling.
We try to make our beer better every time. Nothing can be the same.

 And we will attend " Ji-Beer (Craft beer) Fes Kyoto 2018" for the first time in two years.
We missed a chance to attend it last year and we are looking forward to visiting Kyoto.　
　　
 One more news,
 Our limited license of Happo shu (Malt beverage license) is upgraded to a permanent license.
　　
　It had been passed for 3 years from when we got a limited license in 2015.
　We appreciate everyone who supports us.
 We hope we could be a brewery that supplies good beers now and in the future.
　　
   We will release a new beer called MOTUEKA PALE ALE from this weekend.
 It is using hop from New Zealand called Motueka. It has a white grape aroma, easy drink Belgian Pale Ale.

  Have a nice weekend!

　　

At Yuharappa.

We had a nice marche called "Sunday marche of Yuharappa"  in Tsukuba.
Thank you very much for attending event.

Nice Italian cuisine by Osteria Luce, Fresh strawberrys, Italian breads which fermented with yeasts in the are,,, We had enjoy for good foods and nice location.

 The day was 11th March, so we had collected donations to The Great East Japan Earthquake.
  We donated the fund 13550yen to Ashinga ORG for children who lost or missing their parent by tsunami.
 More than 2000 children (under 18 years old ) are standing in this difficult situations by earthquake.
 Thank you for your corporations.

It still rain outside.
We will open national holiday of 21st March too.
Have a nice weekend and holiday!

New Batch of Brett - TABLE BEER.

 We forgot there is a national holiday this week.
 It is nice weather for a picnic!

 We would like to inform you of the day that we will close our brewery
 on March 11th for attending to event held in Tsukuba City.
 Please join the event "Sunday marche of YUHARAPPA". 

And, We released two new beers!

　♪ Brett - TABLE BEER #19 …

       We are using a new wild yeast with this beer. We cropped the yeast from flowers and airs around our yard. It includes just a few percent of our previous our wild yeast.
The aroma has the unique characteristic of flower pollen.It has a light mouthfeel.  

　　

　And another new one is 

　
　♪ Brett - TABLE BEER #15

       This #15 is secondary - fermented with our previous wild yeast.
 It was long bottle conditioned for over 8 months.
It is getting a more complex barnyard feel, and tastes sour.

 Please enjoy the flavour of yeast.
 Hace a nice weekend!  

　　

Chickens.

　The day gets longer day by day.
  We could feel spring is almost there although every day is still cold.

    Sadly, our chickens had bitten by animals and we lost all of them.
  The animals was a huge raccoon dog.

    We didn't think raccoon dogs are near our house. We underestimated them. 
　
   It had been about 9 months from we had 7 chickens since Mr. Arai to my yard.　

    We had a lot of experience with taking care of chickens.
 I think chickens are the most friendly livestock.
 They stick to the ground and eat insects, and tell us when morning comes.
They even eat our leftover food too.

  Actually, we wanted to eat them. But we couldn't. It too hard to kill them.

 We will have new chickens next spring.
 We love living with chickens and we hope we will get better at caring for them.　　

2018!!

Happy new year!

We have done all our work in 2017.

We are glad to wright this although many things happened.

We are thanks to all people who had visit our brewery,

who knew about us, who talked to us or concern us.

2017 was tough year for us.

It was like climb the mountain.

We are walking toward the target but we couldn't get there. 

And we faced on many difficulties to brew a (good) beer.

But good thing, our beer conditions get better in this year.

And we found what to do and want to do

 in this Japanese beer scene.

We are just want to brew and drink good beer.

But every beers are different. 

And our mind and way to think also different with last year.

 It is changing all the time like seasons change. 

So we don't know what's coming on next year.

We hope everyone's  day life of 2018 will 

filled with small happiness and joy.

Cheers!!

Porter cake.

I borrowed  a book titled 

"The Ireland cooking you can make in your kitchen " from library.

I found many attractive cooks and the book amused me so much. 

And I had interested in foods and cultures of Ireland.

I want to go there someday...

I tried to bake a cake called "Porter Cake" from the book.

Cooked with our Belgian porter, Giono.

Porter Cake / Guinness Cake is like a Pound Cake

cooked with dark beer and a lot of dried fruits.

You will find many recipes of Porter Cake on internet.

It's so easy to make.

Put butter and brown sugar into a pan simmer over low heat,

Pour dark beer, raisins and cranberry.

Keep on low heat 5min.

And stop heat and left it 30min for cool down.

Then, mix with flower and baking powder, cinnamon and eggs.
and BAKE it in oven!

Tasty and well balanced of
sweetness and Bitterness of beer.
Small kids can eat it because beer lost alcohol by heat over.

It has long shelf life as well as stollen.
Try to beer cooking!

Flowers and Stollen.

It gets really cold in morning and night recently. 

I love the airs it is like frozen.

A lots of flowers blooming beautifully in my yard.

I took some pictures.

Camellia. I love the smells too.

Pink Camellia.

"Tsubaki" in Japanese.

Our wild yeasts came from
these flowers.

But only few flowers bloomed
in the past these years.
This year is great.

What was good for trees?

Kamquat also good harvest year.

The Citrus trees.
Lemon was planted last year, Orange and Yuzu was planted 3 years ago.
We had some fruits from Yuzu tree for first time!
Nothing gives from Orange tree.
But trees are growing bigger. We are glad.

We had ate Stollen for the first time. It was delicious !

The Popular bakery in Kisarazu "Pepper's Pantry" has 2 size of stollen.

It is small one. Good for gift.
Classic style stollen.
　

This stollen from "labo" in Saitama.

Nice bakery and they sells also
 vin-nature / natural wines.

Full of fruits and nuts
and hint of liquor.

We had enjoyed the traditional sweets from Germany in Japan.
Stollen is baked every bakery and sweets shop in Japan.
It is feel little strange but we are happy we could eat it.

No border for great foods!

Nice SOBA noodle Stand in Futtsu.

We had climb the Mt. Nokogiri in Futtsu City couple of weeks ago.

There are several hiking courses to climb.
We had to walk a road called "rear car road" which was built with stone bricks around 1930 to 1970.
( It's good course, you can go easily and walk in nice view. )
It about 2 hours to the top walking slowly.

We could see the beautifull view of Futtsu Port, ships and the waves moving slowly from the top of the mountain. It was like a page from a picture book.

 After hiking, we had lunch at SANGA Soba and coffee stand.
Which is a newly opened hand made SOBA noodle and coffee stand.

 We had Songbird beer and soba-pritz for starters.
The small bowl is a soba miso dip.

Unique menu like fish and chips or curry burst.

The pop design plates are made by local artist.

The hand made soba was delicious.
Tempura of local fish and vegetables was also great.

It was a really nice place to visit just have a coffee.

We want the place like this also in our town.

SANGA  SOBA ＆ COFFEE STAND

Kabaya 2192  Futtsu City, CHIBA

OPEN : 11:00～17:00

（ Check the schdules infomation on their facebook page. ）

https://www.facebook.com/SANGA2192/

" Momiji "

　The maple trees "Momiji" turns red in Chiba.
　The trees behind the brewery are very beautifull.

And the another "Momiji".

 The cheeses from "Fromage Sen".
"Momiji" (right) is a washed cheese.
"Takesumi"(left) is Sen's flagship cheese which covered with bamboo ash.
Very soft and fullflavour cheeses. Yummy.

It had been a lot of trouble with our PC has broken down and I cought a bad cold this week.
We bought new one but hard to use new OS.

Take care and Have a nice week !