Two's a flock

 Having lived in Leeds for almost a year now, I’ve drunk more Riggwelter than I care to admit, and — for what it’s worth — every pint has brought me back the same sharp memory of tasting it for the first time in the cellar of Black Sheep’s brewery. The beer’s deep ruby colour, shimmering against the fluorescent overhead light has stayed with me, and remains synonymous with banana, biscuit and red fruit in my mind. 

With Riggwelter remaining the beloved beer it has been for the last 28 years, I’m curious about the team’s decision to make its treasured recipe the base of a collaboration with a brewery that is, in many ways, Black Sheep’s opposite. To find and connect with such a brewery, Jo reached out to a colleague in the export industry, Andreas Fält, who happened to have just returned from Brazil where he’d crossed paths with Japas Cervejaria. By the brewery’s own description, Japas is a trio of Nipo-Brazilian Women — Fernanda Ueno, Maíra Kimura and Yumi Shimada — “resignifying their origins through their creations”. 

After speaking with Jo, I reach out to Maíra to arrange a call. The moment we connect, it becomes apparent to me that Japas is a brewery it’s impossible not to love. “We started out ten years ago, and were very experimental,” says Maíra. “We all had jobs in beer, but were each one of the few people in the industry that were of Asian descent, and women, of course. We decided to make a beer together on a homebrew kit, just for fun. We made an American Pale Ale and divided it into four small batches, each in four little buckets. The one that we liked the most was Wasabiru which, as the name suggests, was beer with wasabi. 

“So we really liked it, we started to talk about it with more people, and then some friends of ours who have a brewery in Sao Paulo invited us to make the beer in their brewpub. We brewed 700 litres in December 2014, released it with a big party in January, and one week later, the beer was sold out.” Encouraged by the success of their first beer, the trio decided to invest in expanding the range, develop a brand, and officially begin operating as a contract brewery in Brazil. By 2019, Japas had started doing the same in the US and is now brewing and distributing in 14 states. 

“We just thought that the team’s story was really compelling, and that it would be a real curveball to incorporate their Brazilian and Japanese influences into one of our beers, and change the dial a bit,” says Jo. “We obviously couldn't get together physically because the distance is too far, but we did a lot of Zoom calls, and had some really great conversations about English Ale — which they are really interested in — and what influences and flavour combinations make their way into Japas’ beer. From there, we honed in on what about the way Japas works would be complementary to Riggwelter.” 

Quite early on, the collaborating teams landed on cherry, which draws on Japan’s affiliation with cherry blossoms and perfectly compliments the red fruit notes in Riggwelter. To balance this, they decided to introduce the deep, rich, acidic, sweetness of cacao and chocolate, which brings in some representation from Brazil and is the perfect companion to Riggwelter’s biscuit base. 

“It was a nice combination of collaborating on what goes into the beer and what we can make this beer taste like, but then also collaborating on the branding side of it,” Jo continues. “It really felt like we were creating half of it, and then sending everything across to the team at Japas for them to finesse and finish off. Their approach to the beer market is interesting because they're operating in a totally different place and in a totally different way. So just having those conversations was really inspiring. More importantly though, if we can help Japas to come across to the UK, and to Europe, then that’s what it’s really all about, isn't it? Giving them some awareness and getting people to understand who they are is something we’re really happy to help with.”

And so, in an unlikely and counterintuitive way, by considering how these two breweries’ similarities and differences complement and contrast, we get to know each a little better. What is cherry if not red fruit? What’s a biscuit without a layer of chocolate? In this unlikely collaboration, contemporary Japanese and Brazilian flavours throw traditional English ale into relief, and by superimposing the traditional on the modern, we find that more unites than divides us.