Spending 3 years in Japan, I became familiar with their beer. This is not because I took to drinking while I was residing as a graduate student there, but because we had beer once in a while for occasions as well as while relaxing with friends on a weekend evening. The more popular beers at the time were Kirin Lager, Asahi Super Dry and Sapporo Premium Beer. There were, of course, many other variants from these major companies including beers offered for specific seasons of the year. But these three were the mainstays of New Year's, year end and graduation parties, birthdays and other celebrations, as well as those times when you just felt like you needed a beer to conclude a toxic day.
Recently, Japanese beers have been available in supermarkets and prices seem to be significantly lower than they were from a few years ago when these beers can be purchased only from stores selling Japanese goods. On recent trip to the supermarket, I decided to purchase a couple of bottles to give to two good friends who recently celebrated their birthdays, who were also similarly in Japan as students when I was there. Reading the labels of the available beers from Asahi and Sapporo, I discovered that the Asahi Super Dry being sold were brewed in Thailand while Sapporo's were from Japan. And so I opted to purchase bottles of Sapporo Premium Beer, which I assumed to be the more faithful brew in as far as what we expected to the beer to taste from our times in Japan. For posterity, I posed the bottles together with a beer mug from my collection.
 |
| A couple of bottles of Sapporo and a mug from my collection |
-
No comments:
Post a Comment