Beer Tours Then and Now

Around the time the Winter Olympics were coming to Sapporo, Japan, I was a dedicated student at the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, the beer capital of America. I had matriculated at the Marquette School of Medicine. However, during my sophomore year, no longer able to sustain itself as a private institution, the school procured state funding. As with all government funding, the Wisconsin legislatrue attached some strings: 1) Change the name to the Medical College of Wisconsin (thenceforward fondly known by its students as "M-COW"); 2) Funding would derive from a 5 cent tax on every bottle of beer sold in the state. This is where the dedicated student role comes in. My clasmates and I strove daily to purchase and consume our fair share of local brews to support our school. But beyond that simple dedication, we often frequented brewery tours and used their tasting rooms for academic meetings. Nothing makes streptococcus pneumoniae more interesting than a frosty mug of Pabst, Miller, or Schlitz, especially if it's at no cost to the imbiber.


About 15 years later I made my next brewery tour while I was doing trauma center surveys for the American College of Surgeons. I happened to be in Portland, OR, scene of my surgical internship year and domicile of two of my children. Aside from the business at hand and getting to see my daughters, this trip was marked by my introduction to microbreweries. The tour and tasting regime was very similar to that of the macrobreweries that I remembered from medical school days: Mandatory meander through rooms of smelly stuff and dry lectures until you can get to the tasting room and the free brewskies. Which were very good, by the way. Microbrews are okay. (I sense that all two of my readers know that already.)


Another 15 or so years passed before my next brewery tour, two years ago when Kathy, Suzi, and I visited the Kirin Beer Factory in Yokohama. We were fortunate to get this tour in English, and the tour guides were cuter than the ones I remember from Milwaukee...but that could just be my aging memory. There was still the pre-requisite smelly stuff before we could finally get to the tasting room for our free samples. But instead of frosty mugs these samples came in the typical Japanese style of very small glasses; so your beer doesn't get warm before you drink all of it. (Never a problem in the Krentz or Sykes families that I know.)


So yesterday as our tour bus approached the Sapporo Beer Museum in Hokkaido, Japan, I fully expected a Kirin-like experience. The Japanese tour guide on the bus did say something that sounded like "lunch", so I figured I could stand another boring tour if it culminated in free food and beer. (Well, not exactly free because it was an MWR tour, but that's another whole topic.) As we were herded into the building, imagine my surprise to be directed straight to the lunch room, to tables of yakinku (Japanese barbecue that you grill at your table) and waiters ready to pour Hokkaido's finest. The deal was all you can eat and all the beer you can drink in 120 minutes. "Do they know they are dealing with American sailors?" someone asked. Indeed they did, because the food kept coming and the beer kept flowing until every American had their fill. And no tour. Ever.


So, Sapporo is now my newest favorite brew in the world. Plus, I believe we can come up with a plausible reason for a party of Sykes and Krentz folk to visit Sapporo sometime. It doesn't even have to be in the cold of winter. The Sapporo Beer Garden is open year-round.