We visited Asahi Ibaragi Brewery for a free factory tour today. The tour was a guided tour that left a very good impression on all of us.
We booked our tour online from Asahi’s website. They offer options to reach their factory either using your own car or using a free bus ride from nearest station which is Moriya. If you take your own car, then you don’t get to taste the beer (don’t drink-n-drive) so your best bet is to use the free bus ride and not miss the chance to taste 3 different kinds of beer in the end of the tour.
We took the 10 am bus from Moriya. The bus took just under 15 mins to reach the factory. It was a small mini-bus for about 30 people. Upon reaching the factory, we were warmly greeted by a tour guide from Asahi who confirmed our tour reservation and handed out a small numbered card assigned to us. The card was needed in the final beer tasting event at the end of our tour.
Shortly thereafter, we were led into a small theater room to watch a short introduction video about Asahi. It was less of an advertising shot, but more about their emphasis on how Asahi strives to cultivate the best quality beer with a short video footage about their strict quality procedures.
After watching the intro video, our tour guide led us towards the factory area. Along the hallway, she explained the various steps involved in making a high quality beer at Asahi. The factory is huge and the hallways are long so there’s plenty of guided posters along the walls to stop & read through the steps. It starts from cultivating wheat, barley, hops to fermentation and into filtration and distillation to final bottling. The tour-guide explained everything in plain simple terms and where we could, she showed around the factory areas from our hallway above. Because this was a weekend Sat tour, we didn’t get a chance to witness anything actual in action. Still, the experience of actually seeing it up close was remarkable.
We did get a chance to actually eat barley and touch & smell the hops – key ingredients for a quality beer, followed by a tour of the entire beer production process from barley-mashing to packaging.
Towards the end, we enjoyed freshly brewed beer in open-area tasting room. The entire tour lasts about 90 minutes. Just before heading back to our return tour bus, we did some gift shopping at a small shop near the entrance. I particularly chose to pick some cakes made out of beer & whiskey (yes!) and some high cacao chocolates (again to go with whiskey!). There aren’t too many souvenirs – mostly some snacks, bottles of whiskey, beer glasses, paper-clips and T-shirts with Asahi written on it.
It was a wonderful experience with Asahi. I definitely suggest visiting the brewery with your family & kids.
Kanpai!