When I travel I normally have a broad idea of where I want to drink craft beer, we have got to a place where most towns of a reasonable size in my places around the world have at least one craft beer bar or brewery.
So I knew in the various places around Matsumoto, which for those playing at home is a town/city maybe about 2hrs north of Tokyo, famed for it's castle (which is really good), a smallish historic district (also worth seeing) and notbably not too many tourists (like me).
Matsumoto Brewing is the obvious choice in this town, having multiple taprooms and being on tap at most bars - somehow we never tasted them though. If you want a smaller, and I'm going to assume better brewery experience, then I would go to Bacca brewing which we did on a rainy night and it was fantastic. but I have no photos of that and therefore this post isn't about them. It's about a place we were never expecting to visit and a place my internet searches hadn't turned up.
I like to just wander around places when I'm on holiday - discover what everyday life looks like, take photos that sort of thing. Eventually I get tired or my partner does and we need a sit down, that's when I pull out a phone and google 'Cafes near me' or 'Craft beer near me' depending on the time of day - basically I'm just looking for somewhere to sit down.
And that my friends is how we came to find 'Beer Cafe Miss Holiday' which is in a residental area of Matsumoto, now where near where the tourists would go but very close to where I decided I needed a rest
And what a find, there were I think 10 taps all serving Japanese Craft beer, including some breweries I'd heard of and some that were brand new to me. Better still they did Tasting Paddles, with tasters that were a decent size.
So We ordered up six beers. They also did 'tasting selection' of the sausages they sold, which made for a good old snack so that had to be ordered as well. - and then you have a pretty much perfect little lunchtime break.
So what do we have in terms of brews
Yes these are strangely numbered, but lets go with Number 2 first: It's a Red Pine Pale Ale from In a Daze brewing who are from nearby Nagano - this was a like a slightly toned done Red IPA, with unspringing given the name - Pine notes, it was really quite interesting.
Then it was on to No 3 which is 'Knight Rider #26" from Derailleur who are a brewery from Osaka, this came highly recommended by the bartender, a very nice man who had a chat to us about Japanese beers, his bar and life in general. The beer is a pretty standard Session IPA
Also on this wooden board is number 4 which is a Hazy IPA with a name only in Kanji so I don't understand it - it from Brew Classic who are in Ishikawa prefecture which is on the north coast near Kanazawa. It was a really good classic hazy, very fresh and light on the palate.
Let's move onto log two. The very pale one at the top is the confusing named Field Research - Suachi from Mountain River brewery, I can't tell if Mountain River have two different names but when you are in Japan as a white person who end up being comfortable in not understanding whats going on. What I did know is that this was a good little Gose
The other orangey looking one is from a very interesting Tokyo based brewery called Namachan who were on my list of breweries to visit in Tokyo but we never got there. They are interesting because they are famous for their smoked beer and this is one of them called ABEChan's Nama Bitter - it was a nice alternative to the endless parade of IPAs you normally get - it had depth and the smokiness really came through.
and finally we have a Imperial Stout called Kuma Holiday which means Bear Holiday in English and it's from a brewery called Bear meet Beer which is in Chichibu, which is in the Mountains above Tokyo, and yes they have Bears there, and beer and I can confirm that they make really good stouts.
So there we have it, this is what holidays are meant to be about, stumbling upon things that are unplanned, in this instance a great little bar in the back streets of Matsumoto which served us great beers, great sausages, good conversation and a seat to rest our weary legs.
and here are the sausages again....