If you’re looking for a quality local craft beer from Osaka you must try Minoh Beer.
Minoh beer is probably the easiest Osaka-based craft beer to find. You might be able to find it in a restaurant or craft beer bar. You can certainly buy it online from their shop, and you can occasionally find it in a random grocery shop. You may also have luck finding it in large cities outside of Osaka as well.
Minoh is a town in Osaka famous for its waterfall and beautiful foliage in the fall. The first time I went to Minoh I didn’t know about Minoh Beer and was mainly going for a nature-filled getaway from the hustle and bustle of Osaka. Some links about Minoh follow this post.
Minoh beer has been around since 1997. It is unique in that it is owned by three sisters. They have a relatively large line of beers and have won many awards. There is a Minoh Beer Warehouse in Minoh where you can tour and buy souvenirs. I haven’t been there… yet.
Here is an image of the Minoh Beer pamphlet (as of Feb 2020). You’ll see a pilsner, a weizen, a pale ale, a stout, a double IPA for their main line. They also have several seasonal offerings, including a Yuzu White for the winter season that I have never tried! Good to see that their product line continues to grow. More images of the pamphlet are at the bottom of this post.
This time I tried this Billikin Beer from Minoh Beer that I had never had before. It’s a light fruity beer that I think would be delicious on a hot summer day. It’s also the first canned beer from Minoh that I have tried.
What else is going on in Minoh?
I was digging through the archives of my old blog and found these words that I wrote about Minoh when I visited in 2005.
One of the local foods available in Minoh is called Momiji Tempura.
As you probably know Tempura is a way of deep frying lightly breaded foods so that when they are done they have a light brown crust of tasty goodness around them. You can tempura anything from shrimp to ice cream.
In Minoh they push tempura to the limits and throw their famous maple leaves into the mix. Maybe they have too many and are trying to control the population? Beats raking them I guess. Crunch.
Momiji Tempura just tastes like an extra crunchy tempura snack. You can’t really taste the leaves… The Tempura coating is more crunchy than usual tempura. You can pop ’em like potato chips. Fun for the novelty I guess.
Hey. Japanese time. Did you know that the kanji for TEMPURA is really tough? Tough like “soy sauce” and “rose” are tough. Japanese usually write the PURA in Hiragana. 天麩羅!!! Learn to write this, and dazzle your friends next time you go out for tempura.
On another note of randomness… Apparently momiji trees are normally red, and then when fall comes they turn green. Opposite of most trees. This explains why I could have red momiji leave tempura in April… Fact or fiction?
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