Yebisu Beer Museum : Best Beer in Town

Nowadays, in Japan, beer has become a common beverage that Japanese loves. We could find it everywhere, in convenience stores, in vending machines and in restaurants. But based on Japanese law, it is prohibited to consume alcoholic beverages if you are under 20 years old.

We decided to visit Museum of Yebisu Beer to learn about beer brewing history in Japan. We took JR Yamanote Line to Ebisu station and walked to Pavilion of Yebisu  Garden Place. This site was named that way because Yebisu Beer Brewery was founded in 1987 in this area. You can enjoy a German-style garden and restaurants here if you have free time.

Yebisu Beer Museum opens at 11.00 AM. As always, it was opened on time and we didn’t have to pay admission fee. Yeah, it is free! Except if you take a 40-minutes tour that costs 500 yen for adult (include beer tasting), a brand communicator (Yebisu expert) who will explain about the history of Yebisu and there are areas that only tour visitors can enter such as tour lounge and communication stage.

Maybe you get confused by asking ‘is there any typo here between Yebisu Beer and Ebisu Station?’ Sounds quite same, right? Because Yebisu Beer was really famous, it later became name of train station and district. Before World War II, Japanese language had Ye (ゑ) as one of the alphabets. But after World War II passed, it was reformed. Ye (ゑ) was erased from alphabet list and E (え) was used to replace Ye (ゑ) until now. But why does Yebisu Beer still use Ye as their brand, not E? They said that there was a history behind the name and they wouldn’t let it be vanished.

In front of Yebisu Beer Museum, you’ll see a super big can of Yebisu Beer and we are sure that you won’t miss the logo which is Ebisu God. This God is one of Seven Gods of good luck (shichi fukujin) that protects fishermen, luck, business prosperity and fair dealing. He is usually described as a man that holds a fishing rod and a red sea bream. In Japan, fish is a mark of good luck.

If you would like to take a tour, you may go to tour counter. Five minutes before the tour is started, please go to the tour lounge and brand communicator will meet you there. We didn’t take any tour so we directly went to Yebisu gallery.

As told before, Yebisu Beer Company was founded in 1887. At that time, Japanese brought German brewmasters to teach them how to make beer in German-brewing methods. Finally after three years (1890), Yebisu Beer was born and gave a higher quality than beer in other areas. It even won a Gold Prize in Paris Expo (1900) and Grand Prix in St. Louis Expo (1904). At that time, beer was an expensive stuff. For comparison, in 1904, beer was sold at 20 cents (100 cents = 1 yen) and a bowl of noodle was sold at 2 cents. It means 10 times higher but it could reach its popularity and became extremely successful until 1937. 

Because there was World War II and  tough years for Japanese so money shouldn’t be wasted for leisure and luxury stuffs, the government then took control on this industry such as making an authorized price for beer, controlling the distribution and abolishing all brand labels. Brewery could still produce beer but they only could receive a based-on-government-standard label. We could say the label was too simple and not attractive at all. Based on the condition that breweries faced, a lot of them were closed and only the larger breweries such as Asahi and Sapporo could survive. Yebisu was one of the breweries that nearly closed. But luckily, in December 1971, Sapporo Breweries Limited took Yebisu to join its group due to customers’ requests.

If you are interested to taste the beer, you have to buy tasting salon coins at vending machine and give that to the staff but pay attention a bit here. As Japanese law that we mentioned on the first paragraph, tasting salon staff can’t serve beer to a driver or people under 20 years old. Beer consumption while pregnant or nursing could give a bad impact to fetal /child development. So watch out with this! Make sure you don’t get drunk because there are a lot of places that will be needed to be explored! You also could visit museum shop to buy only-available-here souvenirs. Have fun!

Information that you need to know:

Opening hours : 11.00 AM – 07.00 PM

                         (Last Yebisu Tour: 5.10 PM)

                         (Tasting salon last order: 6.30 PM)

Closing days    : Monday (Tuesday if Monday is public holiday)       

                         New Years holiday period

Admission fee : Free of charge

Tour fee         : 500 yen (20 years old and over) includes 
                        beer tasting

                      : 300 yen (Junior High School until 19 
                        years old) includes soft drink

                      : Free (Elementary School student               
                        and under) includes soft drink

Address         : Yebisu Garden Place,4-20-1 Ebisu,
                        Shibuya,Tokyo

Website         : http://www.sapporobeer.jp/

Prohibited      : Smoking, pets, beverage and food from 
                        outside, photographing and video filming

We eat, we walk, we talk

-FoodyFooty2-

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