Hitachino Nest White Ale

Origin: Japan

Type: White Ale

Color: Pale gold

Alcohol content: 5%

Recommended serving temperature: 7ºC/45ºF

Brewery: Kiuchi Brewery

Webpage: http://hitachinonest.com/

It's time to further expand the horizons of the blog again. Today it'll be turning to Japan. 

For that purpose, I have chosen the Hitachino Nest White Ale, by the Kiuchi Brewery.

The Hitachino Nest White Ale is a pale ale with a pale golden yellow color and a slightly hazy appearance, which fades to the point of disappearing with time. 

Despite the fact that it's not too foamy, it has a considerable amount of carbonation, easy to notice coming from the bottom of the glass. In fact, it's so fizzy at the beginning that it kind of reminds you of an alka-seltzer.

Its smell is incredibly complex and varied.

I have gotten from it things as varied and interesting as flowers (honeysuckle according to my learned girlfriend), ginger, wheat, coriander, lemon and spices. Let me explain. It has moments, lot of them, where the predominant smell is flowers. However, in general I get a feeling from it that I can closest and best describe as the one of a Belgian witbier on drugs. 

Let me explain further. I feel the main smells are lemon, coriander and wheat, like you would find in Belgian witbier, but they are joined by something else that gives it zestier, spicier edge, which, if I had to pinpoint, would say it's ginger, but it could be some other sort of spice hard to put a finger on.  

The flavor nevertheless is quite different from a witbier. Sure, the wheaty taste is still there, but that's about it.

The taste of this beer can actually be divided into wood and honeysuckle flowers on the one hand, and fruit on the other. 

The taste of fruit itself varies and evolves in your mouth, starting with a soft and sweet lychee  flavor, but quickly getting dryer and less sweet, although extremely refreshing, until what you ultimately have is a distinct taste of pear. This is still not the end to the fruity evolution though, as the aftertaste of this beer is slightly more acidic than the taste of pear and comes slightly closer to the citrusy ginger found in its smell.

The mix of the ginger and the lychee in this beer leave me with the overall feeling of drinking something distinctly Asian, and as such, I would probably look to have it with a similar style of cooking. Nevertheless, given its subtle flavors I would stay away from anything dipped in soy sauce. A wakame seaweed and cucumber salad would probably work pretty well in this sense. 

One thing is for sure though, I went in to the store looking for something different, as happens to many people when they decide to travel to Japan, and I definitely found it.