In my twelve years in Japan I have now been to 45 of the 47 prefectures. The only remaining ones are Ehime and Okinawa. Fukui was the 45th one I visited and I was only there for a couple of hours. But a couple of hours was long enough for a beer stop and in my opinion, that one place justifies me starting a Fukui round up. Fukui hasn’t in the past been a particularly beery prefecture, with there only being a handful of breweries, the beers of which mostly didn’t make it out of the prefecture. Now perhaps unconnected to but conveniently coinciding with the extension of the Hokuriku Shinkansen to the prefecture, we have a brewery that I’ve seen available in Tokyo, and might finally put Fukui on the beer map. So this post will basically be just a little bit about that place right now, but as and when I get the chance to visit the other spots, I’ll add them to this post and it will become a bit more of a substantial round up.
Fukui-shi
Our Brewing Taproom
Small brewpub in MINIE, a kind of food and drink shopping centre / food court just over the road from Fukui station. Very easy to get to if you’re changing trains or passing by. And usefully, it’s open during the day too! Standing counter for maybe about eight but you can also use the communal seating in the complex. If you want proper glassware rather than plastic cups though, you’ll need to stand at the counter. You pay for your beers and food as you go, rather than running up a tab. Ten taps, three of which were guests. All beers priced at ¥1200 for a US pint and ¥700 for a UK half. They also do a flight of three or five beers (120ml), priced at ¥1200 for three and ¥1800 for five. Some food options too. The cheese was very nice! They will apparently soon also have cans to take away. I really enjoyed stopping here and would definitely like to come back. The berry sour was really good!
Website