Matsuri Brewing is a fairly new brewery which has opened just the other side of the river from Tokyo in Urayasu in Chiba. As is often the case, the bar is open before the actual brewery is ready, although in this case they are at least making their own beers already as collaborations with other brewers. I guess I probably should have waited till they were properly up and running before I visited them, but I recently seem to be on a bit of a roll with these posts, and given that we were one station away at the Tokyo Metro Museum it seemed rude not to pop in. Here’s what you need to know.
- Fairly spacious and modern feel about five minutes walk from Urayasu station on the Tozai line. There is a big communal table which doubles up as a table tennis table, a couple of tables for two and two counters, one at the bar and one along the wall. As in Tokyo we’re used to fairly small places with lots of seats, the fact that this place is quite big with not so many seats made a nice change. Clearly there is room for them to expand. The room that looks like it will be the brewery is behind the bar, but I’m just guessing here really.
- Nine taps of Japanese craft, three of which were their own collaboration beers. I imagine that number will increase when they are up and brewing properly. The other breweries available included a few that you don’t see around much which was quite interesting. Beer is served in two sizes, 1/2 pint and 3/4 pint so about 240ml and 360ml. The 1/2s were ¥770 and the 3/4s ¥1100, so it’s not the cheapest place. They also sell by the oz. to takeaway and have 12oz. crowlers for ¥1120, done on a machine at the end of he bar. So quite a forward thinking place! You can also get a flight of 3 x 5oz. beers for ¥1500. I’m not really an oz. person, but I’m trying to use that measurement to respect the way they are listing things on their menu. Along with the stuff on tap they have a couple of fridges of bottles and cans which happened to include a big Kyoto bottle that I’d been looking out for. The prices for these all seemed pretty reasonable with the Kyoto bottle coming out only a couple of hundred yen more than on the Kyoto website.
- One very welcome thing was the multitude of charging points available on the wall counter. They are also open during the daytime and there was no cover charge. It says there is a separate smoking area, but I didn’t notice one so I guess that means it is very separate. I didn’t notice if they have Wifi, but I’d imagine that if they have a load of charging points, they probably have Wifi.
This was a nice place to visit in an area where I have absolutely nothing on the map. Perhaps the prices weren’t the best, but maybe when they are making their own beer in their own brewery they might be a bit better. I guess it’s expensive to contact or collaboration brew. I guess from just a brief look, the two size’s prices seem quite standard but the bigger size isn’t as big as you’d find in most other bars and there didn’t seem to be much cost benefit for ordering the larger size which is quite rare. I don’t know anything about the neighborhood they have opened in, but this place definitely feels like it wouldn’t be out of place in other quite trendy locations. I had a nice time here and if I’m ever back at the museum again, I’ll most likely pop in again.
Japanese breweries on tap when I visited:
Matsuri
Black Tide
Shiki
Far Yeast
Imabari
Kyoto
Nara
Opening Hours:
Monday-Thursday, 14:00-22:00
Friday, 14:00-23:00
Saturday, 10:30-23:00
Sunday, 10:30-22:00
Location/map:
当代島2-1-27 石長ビル 1, Urayasu-shi, Chiba-ken
Telephone:
None