Hitachino Nest Night
Tonight Hitachino Nest, the beer line from Kiuchi Brewery, takes over the bar at Kissa Kissa, with B. United International, Kiuchi’s importer in the United States. Mike Dolan of B. United is in the room, pouring and talking people through the drinks.
Meanwhile, every record on the turntables is Japanese jazz, played in a set order from open to close. There’s no cover, and you don’t need to know anything about beer or sake to sit down.
Kiuchi has been making sake in Konosu since 1823
Gihei Kiuchi founded the brewery in 1823 in Konosu, in Naka, Ibaraki Prefecture, as a sake brewery, and its sake still goes out under the Kikusakari name. Beer came much later. When Japan changed its brewing licensing in 1994, four of Kiuchi’s employees built a beer line from scratch, working out of English-language brewing manuals.
The “Nest” in Hitachino Nest comes from Konosu, written 鴻巣, whose second character, 巣, means nest. The name and the owl label both date from 1996, and Shunji Sakai drew the owl. Kiuchi has also revived Kaneko Golden, a barley from the 1950s, for its Nipponia beer, and in 2020 it opened a distillery at Yasato.
Hitachino Nest Red Rice Ale is brewed with sake yeast
Product photos courtesy of B. United International.
Both cocktails start from Hitachino Nest beer
Kiuchi distills Hitachino Nest beer into a base spirit, and for Kiuchi Umeshu the beer is White Ale. Mikibito then blends that beer spirit with rice shochu and botanicals including yuzu, Ibaraki green tea, sansho and cherry leaf.
Terumasa Hino is on four of the thirteen records
Hitachino Nest Night opens with the Toshiko Mariano Quartet, led by the pianist Toshiko Akiyoshi and her then-husband, saxophonist Charlie Mariano. She’s on number 11 too, billed as the Toshiko Akiyoshi Quartet, with Meditation. From there the list runs through Hideo Shiraki, Sadao Watanabe and Takehiro Honda. Terumasa Hino first turns up at number 4, in the Hino=Kikuchi Quintet, and closes the night with Hi-Nology.
Tonight, Thursday, October 15th
Doors at 5:30 PM, and our Warm Welcome happy hour runs until 7. Records and Hitachino Nest pours until close. Free and open to the public, typically 21+. 667 Franklin Avenue, Crown Heights.
Reserve a table for tonight, or just come by. The event listing has the short version, and our upcoming listings have the rest of the month.
Come listen
667 Franklin Avenue · Crown Heights, Brooklyn
No cover. No reservations required but always encouraged.
