Water & Soil

The most important resource for Sapporo beer wasn't the water — it was the cold. Hokkaido has long, snowy winters, and that's exactly why this location was chosen. Winter ice could be harvested, and ice kept the cellars cool enough in summer for lager yeast to do its work.

For a bottom-fermented beer, this is crucial. Lager yeast (the yeast that works at the bottom of the tank) needs low temperatures, and without cooling the beers would have turned sour or flawed in summer. Before refrigeration existed, Hokkaido was the logical place in Japan to brew a German-style lager.

The water of one small brewery is well documented. According to Hakodate Beer, its brewery draws groundwater from Mount Hakodate, the port city's local peak. It contains calcium and magnesium, making it hard water.

Hard water emphasizes bitterness and gives the beer's body a bit more firmness. That suits the German recipes followed in Hakodate and Otaru. In Sapporo itself, the city grew along a grid plan designed by the Kaitakushi, with the brewery sitting right in the middle. The streets still form a checkerboard pattern today, with the old brewery's red brick buildings standing at its edge.

Hokkaido's soil was only recently opened up for farming. Wide stretches of land between Furano and the Okhotsk coast in the northeast grow barley and hops, and the cool summers extend the grain's ripening period. The crops stand in the fields a long time before late-summer harvest, and winter snow protects the soil from the deepest frost.