Far Yeast Brewing: Hinoki Lager and Mori to Mori Rice Ale

Most craft beer is about hops.

These two are about a forest.

Far Yeast Brewing started in 2011 and built its own brewery in 2017 in Kosuge, a village in the mountains of Yamanashi. Both of the beers we pour from them are tied to what grows around it.

Hinoki Lager

Hinoki is Japanese cypress. If you've been in a Japanese bathhouse or a good sushi counter, you know the smell, clean, resinous, somewhere between cedar and lemon peel.

The wood in this beer comes from thinning. Forests get thinned to stay healthy, and in Kosuge that work protects the village's water sources. Far Yeast takes the hinoki that comes out of it and brews with it.

So the beer tastes like the reason it exists. It's a lager, so it stays clean and dry underneath, and the cypress sits on top as aroma rather than flavor.

Mori to Mori Rice Ale

Mori means forest. The name repeats it.

Roughly half the ingredients are Moritomori rice grown in Hokuto City, Yamanashi, a blend of Koshihikari and Norin 48, named with the hope of protecting the northern forests. It's then brewed with sake yeast rather than beer yeast.

That last part is what makes it unusual. Sake yeast throws a ginjo aroma, the fruity, slightly floral note you get off a good daiginjo. Here it lands on top of hop aroma instead of rice, and the result sits somewhere between the two drinks without committing to either.

Why We Pour Them

We have a deep sake list and a deep beer list, and beers like these are the bridge between them.

Mori to Mori in particular is the one to hand someone who says they only drink sake. It's a beer built with sake thinking, from a brewery that treats its ingredients the way a kura would.

Pair Them With

Hinoki Lager with anything grilled, yakitori off the binchotan, or Hokkaido scallop skewers. The cypress and the charcoal work together.

Mori to Mori with handrolls or agedashi tofu. It's light enough not to run over delicate food.

Try Them at Juraku

Both are on the beer list at Izakaya Juraku, Lower East Side. Ask us which one is drinking better right now.