THE BREWERY IN MOTOMIYA

Motomiya, the quiet town between Nihonmatsu to the north and Koriyama to the south, is home to one of Fukushima's more captivating manufacturing concerns: the local brewery. Five brands of beer are produced at Asahi's Fukushima brewery, including the "Fukushima Bakushu" brand, produced exclusively for the local market. The largest facility of its kind in the Tohoku region, the brewery has the capacity to provide eastern Japan with about 405,000 kilolitres of beer annually.

Although some forms of beer have been around for thousands of years, the brewing process is very different from country to country and brewery to brewery. Not surprisingly, in Japan this process starts with rice, which is cooked with corn starch and malt in a large tank some twelve metres across.The resulting mash is then run through a series of other tanks, called tun, where purified water and malt are added.

The mash is then filtered, leaving a sweet, clear liquid known as wort, to which Hops are added. Hops are the flower-like cones from a perennial vine that can only be grown under certain climatic conditions. Lupulin, the sticky yellow granules that form at the base of these cones is the substance that gives beer its unique, bitter taste. The wort is boiled and then cooled under sterile conditions to prevent impurities before it is moved to outdoor fermentation tanks. It is in these tanks that yeast is introduced to initiate fermentation by converting the sugar in the wort to alcohol and carbon dioxide. While yeast is not an actual ingredient of beer, it plays an indispensable role in the creation of a delicious product. Every different brand of beer at the brewery is fermented with a different yeast, creating subtle differences in the character of each brand.

The "green beer" created by the addition of the yeast must be stored to undergo maturing. Storing large amounts of beer for about two months requires the use of several large storage tanks. There are just over two hundred such tanks at the Asahi's Fukushima brewery, each one capable of holding around half a million litres. If a person were to drink one 633 ml bottle of beer a day, it would take that person 2164 years to drink all the beer in)lust one of these tanks. If that same person were to drink all 202 tanks it would take...well, you figure it out.

After maturing, the beer is filtered and is then ready to be packaged in kegs, cans or bottles. At the brewery in Motomiya, bottles recovered from the market are cleaned and sterilized before being
machine inspected for even slight defects. The bottles are then filled, capped and checked before they are labelled and inspected again, with the machines performing these functions turning out as many as 1200 units a minute. Cans are filled and sealed with different machinery that moves just as fast. The product is then boxed and stored for pick-up. The whole process from hops, malt and rice to the finished product takes about 100 days.

The surprising thing about the brewery is the lack of people needed to keep things moving; the people that are on the brewery floor seem to be there to make sure that everything runs smoothly and to fix any line breakdowns. Supervision of the actual brewing, however, is attended to 24 hours a day from a futuristic looking control room.

Besides manufacturing, another prospering enterprise for the brewery has been the attached beer garden. With over 200,000 customers a year, a tour of the brewery and a stint at the beer garden seems to be a popular day trip. Many tourist buses pull off the nearby Tohoku expressway for a few hours rest and relaxation. Travel after a stop at the brewery must be troubling, given the lack of toilet facilities on most buses.

Tours of the facility conducted in Japanese for groups as small as two can be arranged by contacting the tour office by telephone at 0243-341170 or 0243-34-1190 by facsimile. Reservations are required.