STORY OF KAMITAMA BEER

KAMIYAMA BEER was founded by Manus (Ireland) and Sayaka (Japan) in the middle of the mountains in Shikoku Japan in July 2018.

Our mission is not just to brew tasty beer but to create something fun and exciting for everyone.

We develop new taste experiences combining Kamiyama’s flavours within our favourite beer styles of the world while expressing the playfulness and culture of our second home of Amsterdam in our brewery.

Welcome to KAMIYAMA BEER!!

[About Us]

Manus Sweeney was born and raised in Ireland, the land of Stout and pub culture, loves beer. At 21 he moved to Amsterdam, NL to study sound engineering. After several years working in sales he set up a video production company and later was lucky to travel the world on assignment for the UN, working in Asian and Ugandan villages, South African townships and Colombia.

Sayaka Abe is a visual artist. After studying art in Japan she moved to Amsterdam, a cultural haven where artists from around the world gather. She specialised in painting, installation work, and organizing art projects. She’s also the main representative of Kamiyama Makerspace (KMS), a local workshop equipped with digital fabrication tools.

[Why a brewery in Kamiyama?]

Kamiyama-cho is located in the northeastern part of Tokushima Prefecture, it’s a small town rich in nature with a population of about 5,000.

While working and travelling between Europe and Asia, the two of them discovered Kamiyama in 2013 after being invited to join Kamiyama’s artist residency (Kamiyama Artist in Residence).

The people were lively warm and curious, and charmed by the local nature, endlessly changing day by day they quickly fell in love with the town. After the residency they moved backwards and forwards between Kamiyama and Holland and in February 2016 they decided to move.

In Kamiyama there’s a huge variety of local ingredients, delicious fruit, vegetables and wild meat, however the beer they were drinking was generally mass produced and all tasted pretty similar. Manus, who had been homebrewing in the Netherlands for several years, wanted to produce tasty beer with an essence of Kamiyama, and so the idea for the brewery was born around January 2017.

They started working on the Brewery opening step by step, the reality though was a long series of struggles. In July 2018 however with the support of many people around them, the brewery opened.

These days, we’re still working hard to make it an even more tasty and fun brewery for everybody.

We’re looking forward to see you at KAMIYAMA BEER!