Great Dane co-owner and brewmaster Rob LoBreglio with Tetsuya Kiyosawa.
Wisconsin’s most successful brewpub is heading out of the state — to Japan. Rob LoBreglio, brewmaster and co-owner of The Great Dane Pub and Brewing Company, has been consulting with the Matsumoto Brewery in Matsumoto, Japan, to help them build a new 15-barrel production brewery. Matsumoto is a city of about 240,000 people west of Tokyo. LoBreglio is advising on brewery construction, equipment selection, recipes, marketing and the training of brewery staff. Matsumoto is also planning to open a tied house style pub, serving only its own beers. “The craft beer movement is growing in Japan and my hope is that The Great Dane can become involved in it,” says LoBreglio.
By barrelage, The Great Dane is Wisconsin’s largest brewpub; the Brewers Association ranks it as the ninth-largest brewpub group in the U.S.
Matsumoto Brewing is currently producing four beers with a contract brewer in Japan: an English bitter, a wheat, a pale ale and a stout.
When Matsumoto’s owners began planning to build their own brewery, they contacted a Japanese wine and distillery consulting firm — and that firm happened to employ Tetsuya Kiyosawa. In the late 1990s, Kiyosawa was trained by LoBreglio at the downtown Great Dane brewhouse. The two have remained good friends. As plans progressed with Matsumoto’s production brewery, Kiyosawa contacted LoBreglio and a broader consulting deal emerged with The Great Dane.
Last November, Kiyosawa and LoBreglio organized a week-long Midwest visit for a half-dozen company officials, which included several days in Madison. “Japan drinks mostly lagers, but ales are catching on,” Kiyosawa said during his Madison visit. “The culture of beer is growing and people care about beer being made locally.”
LoBreglio has already made several trips to Japan to meet with Matsumoto brewery officials and investors. He expects to return to Japan in the next few months to oversee the installation of the new Matsumoto brew house.
In April The Great Dane will host two Matsumoto brewers for several weeks of training. “Japanese brewers are making a go of it, but they are insulated. They are emulating the American craft beer movement, without a connection to it,” says LoBreglio.
Japanese craft beer sales are estimated at around one percent of total beer production within the country (craft beer in the U.S. is approximately 12 percent of overall beer sales).
LoBreglio is mostly focused on helping Matsumoto build its new brewhouse and grow its own brands, but there’s also potential for The Great Dane to consider some sort of operation in Japan. “We’re thinking about it, and do have a few irons in the fire,” says LoBreglio. If LoBreglio were to leverage his Japanese consulting into his own restaurant there, it would likely be a brewpub owned by The Great Dane, but operated by Japanese management, with more Japanese-style food.
LoBreglio has been interested in Japan’s beer market for a long time. He made his first trip there nearly 25 years ago to visit his brother John, who was working on a dissertation in Japanese studies. Now his brother splits his time between England, where he teaches Japanese studies at Oxford University, and Kyoto, Japan, where he’s the editor of Eastern Buddhist magazine.
“Japanese beer drinkers are still a little hesitant, but they are coming out of their shells and are enthusiastic,” says LoBreglio. Japanese beer drinkers are not where American drinkers are with bitter beers, sweet beers or high alcohol beers. “It’s similar to the American craft beer drinkers of the 1990s,” says LoBreglio.
