Pseudo-beers
In addition to producing several brands of beer each, the major breweries also produce numerous pseudo-beers, a concept that is unique to Japan. Since beer tax is only applicable to beverages with a malt content of over 67%, these pseudo-beers are brewed with a lower malt content to avoid this tax and appeal to people drinking on a limited budget.

Of the different types of pseudo-beer available, happoshu (low malt sparkling alcohol) uses a similar list of ingredients to beer so is therefore the most similar in taste. Unfortunately it was so successful in offering a beer-like taste at a lower cost that its popularity forced the government to increase the tax on happoshu. As a result happoshu is now closer to beer in terms of price as well as taste.

The best tasting and most popular brand of happoshu is Kirin’s Tanrei (”Brewed For Good Times”). This particular happoshu beats other brands by compensating for its lack of malt with extra CO2 and plenty of sugar (a factor that led to me putting on loads of weight when I used to drink the stuff regularly!).

Other types of pseudo-beer (dubbed dai-san no biiru - ‘third beers’) have also been introduced by brewers to avoid beer or happoshu tax altogether by using malt substitutes such as soy peptide, soy protein and bean protein in the brewing process. While their taste is further removed from beer than that of happoshu, their lower cost has ensured increasing popularity.

Pricing
As well as pseudo-beers there are also some other unique things about Japanese beer that reflect different aspects of life in Japan. The most noticeable of these for foreigners is perhaps the pricing of beer, which appears to be strictly dictated by the country’s four brewery cartel.

Unlike western countries, Japanese beer is virtually the same price for every brand with a comparable level of taste. There are no special discount promotions and no significant savings on bulk purchases: six individual cans cost almost the same as a six pack, and 24 individual cans cost almost the same as a 24 pack (to get this into perspective, in Australia a box containing four sixers costs less than three sixers bought individually).

In fairness, this attitude prevails throughout Japanese retailing(1), most likely due to the size of people’s homes – houses and apartments have little storage space, a fact that is reflected both in frequency of grocery shopping and unwillingness to buy large amounts of food and drink at once.

Notes:
1 - This difference in attitudes between Japan and western countries is also evident in public transport fares - while visitors to Japan are probably used to return tickets often costing about 1.5 times the price of a single, in Japan returns aren’t discounted and cost the same as 2 singles.

Check out these other beer-related articles: Slang Expression #5 - Turbo Shandy, Beer and the Mother Tongue, Beer In Japan - Part 1 and Beer For Kids.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 21st, 2007 at 5:17 pm and is filed under Uncategorized, Articles in English, Food and Drink, Beer in Japan, Drinking in Japan. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.