Japan Kirin Beer Factory & Brewery Tour, Yokohama Guide + Photos

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‘Kanpai’ to the Kirin Brewery Tour in Yokohama, Japan – a fun and cheap way to try lots of Japanese beers and walk around an actual brewery, learning about the brewing process.

Japan Kirin Beer Factory & Brewery Tour, Yokohama Guide + Photos

Many Asian breweries offer brewery tours but the Yokohama Kirin Brewery Tour is one of the best beer and tasting tours in Japan. The tour lasts 90 minutes (plus ample beer drinking time) and costs only 500 Yen (as of early 2024).

Kirin has multiple brewery sites across Japan (beer is Japan’s most popular drink) and as part of the tour, you’ll see interactive displays, watch the bottling process plus go to ‘beer school’.

So raise your glass to our ultimate guide to the Kirin Beer Village Brewery Tour in Japan 2024:

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Table of Contents

Kirin Breweries Overview

Founded in Yokohama in the 1880s, Kirin is one the largest Asian breweries and beer breweries in Japan, brewing popular beers such as Kirin Beer, Spring Valley beer plus Kirin Lemon, Mets and Gogo no Kocha.

It also owns Lion Brewery who operate out of Australia and New Zealand.

Kirin Brewery Village in Yokohama is home to the Kirin Brewery tour plus a tasting bar and boozy gift shop.

Kirin has breweries and brewery tours in the following cities (we’ve only done the Yokohama Brewery Tour…so far):

Hokkaido Chitose
Sendai
Toride
Yokohama
Nagoya
Shiga
Kobe
Okayama
Fukuoka

To book a Kirin Brewery Tour, click on the official Kirin brewery tour link here >

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How to get to Kirin Brewery Tour / Beer Factory in Yokohama

The Yokohama Kirin Beer Village and brewery tour is a short 5 to 10 minute walk from Nama-mugi Station on the Keikyo line, in Northern Yokohama.

If you are travelling from Tokyo, Yokohama is approximately a 1 hour train-ride away.

If you can, we’d recommend staying in the city for several days as there are lots of things to do in Yokohama, like lots of cool craft beers and awesome attractions.

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Kirin Brewery Tour Cost

The Kirin Brewery Beer Tour for Yokohama and other Kirin sites costs 500 Yen per adult, which includes several beers (or soft drinks) and tastings. This is around £2.70 / $3.40 / 3 Euros. Kirin Brewery Tour prices are correct as of early 2024.

Kirin tours are free for those under 19 years of age (but does not include any tastings).

Visitors with children are welcome but some Kirin tours are for adults only so please check with Kirin directly.

Tours of Kirin soft drink factories in Japan are free of charge.

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Kirin Brewery Tour Yokohama opening hours and details

Kirin Brewery Yokohama tours usually operate from 9:40am in the morning until 4:30pm in the afternoon – the last Kirin Brewery tour of the day starts at 3pm.

There are normally 8 brewery tours a day at the Yokohama Kirin Brewery, each allowing up to 25 visitors and lasting 90 minutes including beer tastings.

It is recommended to book Kirin beer and brewery tours in advance as the slots book out quickly, especially at the weekends and in peak season.

Kirin Beer and Brewery tours can be taken on weekdays and weekends – however on weekends, the manufacturing and bottling lines may be closed.

To book a Kirin Brewery Tour in Yokohama, click here >

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Kirin Brewery Tour in foreign languages

Kirin factory tours are conducted in Japanese by Kirin employees – foreign guests are catered for with a portable audio guide (to listen to when the tour guide is speaking in Japanese) plus subtitles on some of the videos.

On our Kirin Brewery tour, we listened to an English portable audio guide, plus there were also Korean guests who had Korean audio guides – other languages may be available.

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Checking In

Once you’ve secured your spot on a tour, on the day, check in at the Kirin factory reception and try to arrive at least 10 minutes before your brewery tour – toilets are also available onsite.

Japan Kirin Beer Factory & Brewery Tour, Yokohama Guide

Before our Yokohama beer tour, one of the members of staff kindly offered to take our photos in front of various Kirin props and products.

You are then ushered into a small theater to watch an explanatory video about the history of Kirin Brewery and the beers / spirits and soft drinks it produces – by this stage, with all the beer videos, we were already getting very thirsty!

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What to expect on a Kirin Ichiban Brewery Tour

The tour from start to finish lasts about 90 minutes – the first part of the tour sees the guide take you around parts of the factory plus museum style rooms which explain more about the brewing process and the various beer types and styles.

You’ll learn about the raw ingredients that go into making beers (hops, water and barley) and get to touch and smell some very pungent hops – the brewing vats are huge, something you don’t really appreciate until you get up close to them.

Afterwards, you’ll observe (and smell) the brewing process in action, learning about mashing, fermentation and storage of the beer.

The malt is mashed to make the beer wort then combined with hops followed by yeast to start the fermentation process, before being stored at low temperatures. This is also where the beery magic happens, creating different styles of beers.

Compared to brewery tours we’ve done in the UK, we found this Kirin Brewery tour very informative and modern. The Yokohama Kirin Brewery Tour had lots of flashy graphics / projections and was fairly interactive (good but we aren’t talking Team Labs quality).

All in all, it was very slick and well organised.

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Bottling Process

One of brewery tour highlights was standing above the Kirin bottling line – literally thousands of bottles of beer whizzing past underneath our feet, on a giant production line and conveyor belt (noisy too).

If you can, try to do the Kirin Brewery tour in Yokohama on a weekday as often the bottling line is closed on the weekends.

All these hundreds of beautiful looking Kirin beer bottles made us very thirsty so we were very grateful for the final part of the tour – some would say the very best part of the Kirin Brewery Tour…the tasting.

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Kirin Brewery Tastings & Snacks

Once the brewery tour is completed, visitors are ushered into a state-of-the-art tasting room and brewery bar handily located right next to the Kirin gift shop (more on this later).

The Kirin taproom bar is manned by several smiley staff and all of the tour visitors are given a freshly poured pint (ish) of Kirin Ichiban beer – and beer at the source always tastes better, right?! Cheers.

After this much appreciated Kirin beer and a humble bow from the bar staff, you’re ushered on over to the tasting area to be gifted a tasting tray of several more Kirin Beers plus complimentary snacks like Kiki No Tane snacking beans and almonds, flavoured using Kirin Beer Yeast.

And remember, this 90 minute Kirin beer tour and tasting session only cost 500 Yen! Such incredible value and they could easily charge two or three times as much and it’d still be worth it – you have to love Japanese breweries!

Our tasting tray consisted of three glasses of different Kirin Beers – Kirin Ichiban, Kirin Ichiban Premium plus Kirin Ichiban Kuronama (a richer dark beer with umami taste).

Once you’ve decided on your preferred Kirin beer style, the staff then offer to bring you one last tasting of your favourite – we went for the Kirin Ichiban Kuronama as it wasn’t one we tried before but it was so good!

Whilst you taste the beers, the tour guide gives an overview of the beers but this was in Japanese so we just enjoyed the beer- thoughtfully, they gave us some tasting notes in English.

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Kirin Brewery Tour bonus gift

As the beer tastings were coming to an end, we offered the opportunity to get a free Kirin wooden beer mat / coaster.

Just become a friend of Kirin on the Line app application to get your unique souvenir (you can always delete the chat after, once you’ve got the cute coaster).

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Kirin Brewery Tour gift shop

At the end and once you finished off your samples, you’re free to depart – and to be honest, we were feeling quite merry at this stage!

Japan Kirin Beer Factory & Brewery Tour gift shop, Yokohama Guide

The last stop is the Kirin Brewery gift shop which is stocked with various Kirin beer products, some common and some more unqiue beers and Kirin merchandise.

For instance, you can buy Kirin Ichiban golf balls, Kirin bottle top fridge magnets, Kirin phone covers – even 3D Kirin beer can memo notes (very cool). Also look out for Kirin Beer flavoured Pretz biscuits and other snacky bits.

And yes, you can buy beer in individual bottles or in packs to take back to your hotel.

How much beer do you get on the Kirin Beer Tour?

So exactly how much beer do you get to drink on the Kirin Brewery Tours?

The simple answer is a LOT – we’d guestimate at least 4 pints of beer, once you take into the tastings on the tour, in the bar and the dedicated tasting trays at the end. So again, for just 500 Yen all in, it is such a good value tour.

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Kirin Brewery Tasting Tour Review / Is it worth it?

Yes, we would absolutely recommend the Kirin Brewery Tour in Japan and we’ll be sure to do it again next time we return.

As big fans of Japanese / Asian breweries (and Japanese beer obviously), this is an excellent value brewery tour that showcases the inner workings of a huge brewery production line, plus allows you to try many of their popular beers.

We joined the Yokohama Kirin Brewery Tour but Kirin tours are available in 8 other Japanese citys / prefectures as well. Cheers to Kirin Brewery Tours!

Other craft beer things to do in Yokohama, Japan / Yokohama Breweries

Enjoy craft beers at the World of Beer Museum Yokohama.

Try a Yokohama craft beer brewery taproom. Yokohama has one of the best craft beer scenes in the whole of Japan. We enjoyed the Revo Brewing taproom below our hotel (APA Hotel Yokohama Bay Tower) plus the slightly eclectic but equally epic Yokohama Brewery taproom.

Did you know there is a famous Japanese 7-Eleven craft beer store in Yokohama Port at the front of the Yokohama Hammerhead mall which specialises in international and Japanese craft beer?

*Japanese 7-Eleven craft beer store in Yokohama*

We’ve visited Yokohama’s viral craft beer 7-Eleven and it is amazing! There are over 500 different craft beers from all over the world plus lots of beer merchandise – Yokohama is a Japan craft beer lover’s dream!

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