It's been a while since we've been had a beer post and that's no coincidence: it's been a while since I've had a beer "worth writing home about". But if this one doesn't fit that description, I don't know what would. It's called Nipponia. I imagine it will be for sale in the stores that carry Nest Beer stateside, since it seems like something of their flagship. It's brewed with hops and barley that were grown in Japan. For the life of me I couldn't tell you that from the taste, just from the label, but it's still unusual and still a cool fact. It's a beer with a complex taste and is rather bitter, so it's a beer I would have liked to have been sharing, but what I discovered by drinking the (extra-large) bottle slowly was that it actually became more and more delicious as the beer warmed to room temperature. I'm not a lukewarm beer drinker, preferring the crisp coldness of a mountain stream to the slow flow of a shallow river (what a weird metaphor -- who drinks shallow rivers anyway?), but this was definitely best half an hour after I took the bottle out of the refrigerator. And what a bottle. Hands down it's my favorite beer bottle. The label is printed on Japanese paper -- if you look closely you can see the fibers -- the name's stamped in gold foil and it's got that mysterious owl. I'm not a bottle collector, but I have a feeling this one's going to miss the first few glass recycling pick-up days. Keep an eye out for it, enjoy it with a friend on a summer night, and think of Japan!
