Happoshu Beer

In recent years many of the Japanese breweries have been producing Happoshu which is a low malt beer like beverage containing less of malt content than normal beers.

This type of beverage was designed to get around the nation’s tax laws so the drink was not classed as beer and received a lower tax rate for manufacture, making it cheaper for the consumer. If the beverage contained less than 67% of malt in its weight of its fermented ingredients then the product was not beer.

The Government soon caught on and realized it was loosing quite a bit of tax revenue so they raised the stakes and changed the malt ratio level to 50%, brewers followed suit and decreased the malt to under 50% to still stay below the tax bracket.

The brewers have now even gone further and decreased the malt content in many of their products to less than 25%, to get in under another tax bracket.  There has been a huge increase in new brands of Happoshu in recent years to increase the market share and lately new trends have emerged like mixing happoshu with other types of alcohol or making more healthy products with low carbohydrates and purines. There are also products using unmalted barley, Sapporo has a popular product called Mugi 100% which uses this process.

There are some other quiet innovative recipes with Sapporo’s Draft One using pea protein, Kirin’s Nodogoshim Nama using soy protein and Suntory’s Super blue using wheat sprits.

In most cases alcohol levels are the same in Happoshu as with normal beer and the taste is nearly as good, they do appear to be a little less appealing with a flavour that is not as full and sweet more than bitter, but for the cheaper price you can’t have everything.