Gigantic Brewing & Tamamura Honten Brewery Collaborate On Kagami-Biraki IPA

After last Friday’s release of its collaboration beer, Powder Green Tuxedo IPA with Other Half Brewing, Gigantic Brewing will release its next New England Style IPA on Thursday, September 14th. With this release Gigantic’s Ben Love traveled to Nagao, Japan to brew in collaboration with Tamamura Honten Brewery. This collabo resulted in Kagami-Biraki IPA.

This past spring Love traveled to Japan to participate in the Shiga Kogen Snow Monkey Beer Festival. The festival was founded by Tamamura Honten owner/brewmaster Eigo Sato. The event featured live bands and DJs, along with beer from craft brewers around Japan and American brewers Gigantic, Hair of the Dog, Jester King and Oxbox. Some of you may remember Eigo Sato when he visited Portland during the 2016 Oregon Brewers Festival.

While in Japan, Love collaborated on a new beer, Kagami-Biraki IPA, with Eigo Sato. This New England Style IPA was then aged in sake barrels made of Japanese cedar for a few additional months. The beer was dry hopped in the fermentor and then again a second time after removing it from the barrels, right before packaging. We tasted this beer a few weeks ago and truly enjoyed the citrus hop forwardness along with a bit of dryness from the cedar. Kagami-Biraki IPA sits at 6.5% ABV.

The name Kagami-Biraki comes from the tradition of the sake barrel breaking ceremony that occurs at happy events like weddings and ceremonial openings.

Gigantic Brewing’s Taproom will be pouring from the few kegs that were shipped over from Japan. There are a few empty bottles around the taproom that show the beautiful label artwork. Makoto Yamaki and Kamikene, artists from Japan who regularly work with Tamamura Honten Brewery, designed the Kagami-Biraki IPA label.

Don’t delay, as Kagami-Biraki IPA will not last long.

Gigantic Brewing Company
5224 SE 26th Ave
Portland, OR 97202