Asahi Beer Tour

I should really emphasize that everything here was at amazing scale. I don't think that comes out in my writing.

Asahi Beer
Factory Study Tour

For our second factory study tour of the quarter we went to the Asahi Beer Factory in Kanagawa prefecture. The Asahi Beer Factory is an eco friendly factory where the Asahi beer that gets shipped to the Kanto region is produced. Recently the emphasized lots of eco and energy friendly technologies to make the production of beer more efficient.
This factory study tour was much more touristy than the other tours that we have gone on. The guide was a paid guide who spoke very good english, and the walkway that we went on had posters and signs describing all sorts of information pertaining to the brewing, or in this case production of beer.
The introduction was a video produced to give an overview of the brewing process and also was one giant advertisement for Asahi beer and its various products. The video covered all aspects of brewing, from raw goods acquisition to the bottling and shipping of the finished product.
After the video we started the tour. The first stop on our tour was the mash room. Mash is what later gets fermented into beer by yeast. To create mash one must first bring the barely to a boil and physically mash it up. After the barley has been mashed it is then added to another vat that contains hops. The whole thing is stirred until its dissolved and then the solid seeds of the barely and hops are filtered out, leaving only the mash.
The mash is then transferred to fermentation units outside. These units are where the mash is converted to beer by yeast fermentation. It takes about 10 days to ferment the mash into beer. The process is carefully controlled and watched to make sure the entire process occurs at 0 C. A single fermenting column contains something like 50,000L of beer
When the beer has been created the yeast must then be filtered out of the final product. Yeast makes beer taste bad, and has, various other health effects. Therefore the yeast is filtered out.
After the filtering process, the beer is moved into the sterile bottling area. I found out something new about metal bottles that day, they originally come in two parts, the top and the bottom. The bottom is filled with beer, the top is placed on and then the top has a lip that gets folded and pressed into the bottom to seal the can.
When the bottling is done packing occurs. Because the demand for beer in Tokyo is very high one 24 pack of Asahi beer is produced every second in the plant. It was a really cool sight to see.
The tour ended with a 30min nohihoadai, which was a lot of fun. The tour guide showed us how to pour a beer the “proper way” although I disagree. Her instructions were as follows: first you need a chilled mug (I agree with this), then pour the beer into the cup so that a head is formed. Then til the cup so head is no longer created while pouring and fill the cup up all the way. The end result should have about 1/3 of the cup filled with head, and the rest beer. In my opinion thats way to much head on a beer. Actually beer should be so thick it doesn't even form a head.