Today a post on what is a relatively under the radar, (at least in my eyes), small chain of pubs. Obviously, I can only vouch for the branch I went to, so the other two will remain on the digest post here. However, I imagine the experience is fairly similar though, even if the decor looks quite different on the website. The places I am talking about are the Smoke Beer Factory bars based in the general Ikebukuro kind of area, and this branch is in Otsuka and is where the brewery is. Makes sense to go to the source I thought. So, here’s what you need to know.
– Split over two floors with the ground floor being the brewery and a small counter for maybe six and the upstairs being the main seating area with space for a bit over 20 in a reasonably big room. The first thing that hits you when you walk in is the smoky smell. Not great surprise given the name I guess. It’s a pleasant food / beer smokiness though, rather than tobacco. The upstairs room is quite dark with no real windows, but it’s pretty comfortable all the same.
– 12 taps, half of which are their own beers and half of which are guests. The house beer styles were a rauch, weizen, IPA, Belgian white, lager and a spiced ale. When we visited the guests were mostly West Coast Brewing beers, but they had recently had a tap takeover event there. There was a Brewdog beer available too. The breweries mentioned below were ones whose empty kegs I spotted on the way out so hopefully that should give you an idea of what to expect. Beers are generally served in three sizes, small, regular and pint. There were no measurements for the sizes though, so I’m not 100% sure what they are. We went for small and I’d say they were in the region of 250ml. The others though, who knows? But I’d guess that each size adds about 100ml to the pour. Just a guess though. The prices for the house beers were ¥580, ¥880 and ¥1080 and the guests were ¥680, ¥1080 and ¥1280. There were a couple of bottles too, one of which, unsurprisingly was a Schlenkerla. There was a ¥300 cover charge for which we got some snacks and some smoked pickled small eggs. Given the name of the bar, I was slightly surprised that there weren’t more smoked beers. But to be honest, a whole line up of smoked beers might not be the most business savvy line up to have in Tokyo.
– Normally in this third point I mention cover charge (already done that…), daytime opening (nope) and wifi (couldn’t find it). So nothing to say in this paragraph really. Oh, I guess it is open pretty late, so I guess that’s worth mentioning. Oh, and I should probably say again that there is plenty of smoked food available along with some more common pub food type dishes.
So that’s about it. It’s always interesting to visit a brewery rather than a bar and it’s good that they have plenty of their own beers available. It would be a pretty obvious statement to make to say that I like some of their beers more than others, but it’s also accurate. The feel of the place had me thinking of the Bakushu Kobo bars, but I’m not sure the comparison works 100% though. They certainly seem to have their fans, as the place was pretty busy with what seemed like locals fairly early on a Saturday evening. They also have quite a strong visual aesthetic, with plenty of pictures of their mascot character and merchandise available featuring it. If you’re into smoke, this is the place to come, but expect it to be more reflected in the food available rather than in the majority of the tap list.
Japanese breweries on tap when I visited:
Namachan Brewing
Shonan
Sankt Gallen
West Coast
Hop Kotan
Repubrew
Opening Hours:
Tuesday-Saturday, 17:00-01:00
Sunday, 17:00-23:00
Closed Monday
Location/map:
南大塚1-60-19, Toshima-ku, Tokyo
Telephone:
03-3942-0180
Links:
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