Isekado: Craft Beer From a Mochi Shop Founded in 1575

The brewery behind these beers is older than almost every brewery on earth, and it didn't start out making beer.

Ise Kadoya was founded in 1575 as a mochi shop and tea house on the road to Ise Jingu, serving pilgrims walking to Japan's most important shrine. In 1923 it incorporated and started producing miso and soy sauce. In 1997 the 21st-generation head of the business, Suzuki Narihiro, added a brewery.

Four hundred and fifty years of feeding pilgrims, then beer.

Where It Still Sits

The company still runs a restaurant on Oharaimachi, the approach road to the inner shrine at Ise, which is rebuilt in the Edo-period townscape style.

The brewery itself moved into a purpose-built facility in 2018, where everything from planning and design to brewing, bottling and shipping happens in one place.

The Beers We Pour

Isekado Pale Ale — their long-running core beer, and the one that made the brewery's reputation outside Mie.

Isekado Hazy IPA — the newer style, only defined as its own category in 2018. Golden with a white haze, juicy rather than sharply bitter.

Isekado has taken gold at the International Brewing Awards in two consecutive competitions, which is not a small thing for a brewery attached to a 450-year-old mochi shop.

Why We Pour Them

Because it's a brewery that treats beer as one more thing a very old food business happens to make well, alongside the miso and the soy sauce.

That's roughly how we think about our own list. Everything here is supposed to be good on its own terms, not because it fits a theme.

Pair Them With

The Pale Ale is a food beer. Yakitori, karaage, tebasaki, miso bacon. It has enough bitterness to reset your palate and enough malt to keep up with a tare glaze.

The Hazy IPA is softer and juicier, so it goes better with lighter things. Handrolls, crispy rice, spicy edamame.

Try Them at Juraku

Both are on the beer list at Izakaya Juraku, Lower East Side.