Hitachino Nest White Ale

May 19th, 2011 - Somewhere in the hordes of Japanese pale lagers and happoshu beers are agents and moles - spies, hidden amongst the flock of consistently weak brews. These are Japan’s craft brewers, practicing excellence and fine form against the bashing tides of a consumer demand pushed by sheer momentum. One of these furtive rebels is Hitachino, and this review is about their White Ale. Dressed in the pale garb of the style and with a nice cloudiness, you can immediately tell this is different from crystal clear lagers poured at every izakaya in the country. A stronger sign of its rebellious nature is found in the aroma - signals of flavor, scents of butter and wheat, deep and rich and flavorful, enough to entice the palate for a sip. Here I catch a lot of carbonation at first, but also ample butter notes and deep, bready wheatiness, lasting until the very end of the aftertaste. Here the bread flavor expires, exhausted, collapses and then a strange and curious squeeze of diluted lemon juice punctuates the flavor. It’s a clear and definitive conclusion, and feels strangely deliberate. Whatever the intention in manufacture, this is, by itself, a great light beer. But as a resident in and amongst Japan’s beer market saturated with flavorless suds, it’s less of a spy and more of a superhero.