East Tokyo brewpub adventure part 1 (Parts 2, 3 and 4 coming soon)
It’s maybe a little bit late, but I feel like I’m starting 2026 at breakneck speed. After adding a couple of Hatagaya places last week, a free evening when I was kind towards the east of Tokyo presented the perfect opportunity for me to tick off four brewpubs, some of which are new, and some of which have been lingering on my ‘should visit’ list for a long time. I’m not sure how long I’ll be able to keep this pace up but I’ll do my best. (And as I think I might keep saying over and over until someone donates, it isn’t cheap to host this website and is even more expensive to visit four breweries in one evening to write them up, so, you know, all donations gratefully accepted). The first of the four vaguely east Tokyo breweries is Pherment. This is one of the newer ones (at least in this location), and maybe I was a bit too quick off the mark in this case as there weren’t a lot of their beers available. I’d never been to the Kuramae neighbourhood before but I’d heard a lot of people talking about it. And when I was there it seemed like there were quite a lot of visitors also in the area. (Actually, I found this was the case in quite a few of the areas in this little mini series, albeit, not so much in the actual brewpubs). With the area being referred to as ‘Tokyo’s Brooklyn’ I guess I came with some assumptions. I’ll leave it to you to guess if they were proved correct or not. Here’s what you need to know:
- Quite small place with the requisite bare concrete interior. Three small tables for maybe two people each and a counter where five or six could stand. You order at the bar and pay as you go. Quick note, as with quite a lot of places now, they don’t accept cash. The small bar opens into the small brewery at the back. It was literally open. And the front of the bar was open onto the street which would be quite pleasant at certain times of year. There was one cobbled together bench outside if you’re up for pavement culture fully al-fresco boozing. As far as I know they are brewing here already. They used to share the old Vector brewery in Shinjuku, but that place has closed now, so I can only presume that the Pherment beers they had available were made on site. Maybe I should have asked, but you know that’s not my style.
- Six taps, but only four were on when I visited. Out of those four, two were their own beers. Given that I was focused on new breweries, I perhaps could be excused for forgetting to write down the details for the guest beers, but I know one of them was by Bay Brewing, I forgot to check the prices. For their own beers, they had a hazy IPA and a NZ Pils. They were served in the usual two sizes and were priced from ¥1300-¥1400 for the pint and ¥800-¥900 for the half.
- They had WiFi. There was no cover charge and they have some daytime opening. I couldn’t really see a kitchen area but they did offer some bar snacks, and also pizzas(!). Maybe there was an oven toaster under the counter or something.
So, my first stop complete. This was a nice place, seemingly quite popular with tourists (who made up the majority of the customers when I was there. But then again, maybe those other customers presumed I was also a tourist, which given that I had never been to Kuramae before, I guess I was, to some extent). Perhaps I’ll wait till they have more of their own beers on tap before making the journey back, but if you’re in the area, this is definitely a good place to stop. Kuramae is on the Toei Oedo and Asakusa lines, which to be honest, I don’t use very often, but it is easily reachable on foot from either Asakusa or Tawaramachi stations. And those Toei lines are pretty useful for crossing the river and going further east if you’re going to visit some of the other breweries that I’m going to write about in the next few entries.
Japanese breweries in bottles or cans:
Pherment
Bay Brewing
Opening Hours:
Monday – Saturday 16:00-23:00
Sunday, 15:00-22:00
Location/map:
蔵前 3-13-14, Taito-ku, Tokyo
There are two Kuramae stations so I’ve done a map from both of them. Also, a map from Asakusa, because, why not?
Telephone:
None