It’s weird that at one of the worst possible times to visit new places I suddenly seem to have found an appetite for doing so. Once again the state of emergency has naturally influenced the experience I was able to have here, but I’ll do my best to give a decent summing up of this new beer shop. Drink up is another place with a unique selling point and it’s quite a classic Japanese thing too. Which slightly contrasts with the fact that this place specialises in imported beers. Anyway, I’ll just get on with the post.
– Entering from the street you could be excused for thinking that this place was a dry cleaning shop or something like that. Much of the space is taken up by a back room behind the counter leaving a small sliver at the front with a vending machine where the business happens. The fact that the back room is a fridge might hint that we’re not cleaning clothes here though.
– Beer is served direct from the vending machine. Yes, there’s that unique Japanese selling point. Unlike the normal machines you find on the street, this one is packed full of craft beer which seemed to be mainly imported from Canada. I believe they are doing the importing themselves. This means you have around 30 selections to choose from. Pay as you would at a normal vending machine and press the button and you get your beer rapidly delivered to the tray at the bottom of the machine. Not sure how good this is if you are planning to drink it straight away though. They also had some ‘maple water’ (think that was what it was called), some gift sets and some merchandise.
– Given that your basically buying from a vending machine it will come as no surprise to hear that there is no cover charge. Given that it is a beer shop it will come as no surprise that they have some daytime opening. Given that this is a post on Tokyo Beer Drinker it will come as no surprise that it is lacking in useful detail…
I believe that Drink Up will allow on site drinking when we are not under a state of emergency. Space is quite limited and there’s no seating though so I expect that it’s probably not somewhere you’ll spend hours but it’s definitely a fun stop. The fact that they seem to have so much space at the back of the shop suggests that there might be something in the works. Maybe some taps. Just speculating here though. And here is the usual Covid caveat that says that because these are weird times, the opening hours and other details on here might not be accurate when you visit so best to check their Facebook or Instagram. It’s a little walk north from the other beer places in Koenji, but it’s only 10 minutes from the station so when times are better you could easily visit during a Koenji crawl!
Japanese breweries on tap when I visited:
None
Opening Hours:
Daily, 15:00-20:00
(But these hours were checked during the state of emergency so better check yourself before going)
Location/map:
3-40 高円寺北, Suginami-ku, Tokyo
Telephone:
03-6304-1515