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Sapporo Brewery

Japan · Regional · ★ Award winning · Known for a full range of styles
★ Award winningKnown for a full range of styles

Sapporo traces its origins to the Kaitakushi Brewery, which the Hokkaido development commission opened in Sapporo in 1876 under brewer Seibei Nakagawa, who had learned lager brewing in Germany. The cold northern climate suited bottom fermentation, and the red star on the labels dates from that founding era. Today the company is headquartered in Ebisu, Tokyo, runs several breweries in Japan and has its international lager brewed in North America and Vietnam. In 1984 its hop breeders registered Sorachi Ace.

13Beers
2Styles
5%Avg ABV
1876Founded
Consistency· share of beers above catalogue avg
100%
catalogue avg 47%

Beers by Sapporo Brewery

13 beers

← scroll to see all 13 beers →

Brewery DNA

The recurring character behind the beers

Sapporo Brewery brew within a single family — the differences sit in how, not what.

Signature · 13 beers
Lager 12Pale Ale 1

Across these 13 beers, 4 notes keep showing up:

cleanevery beer
13 of 13 beers
bitterevery beer
13 of 13 beers
malty
12 of 13 beers
crispevery beer
13 of 13 beers

Four notes carry across the range. That's a tight house style — most breweries in the catalogue share just one. 3 of them come through every single beer.

Compared with the wider catalogue of similar styles:

typical for similar stylesSapporo Brewery
in no beersin every beer
bitter
in all 13 of their beers · typical similar styles brewery: 3 in 5
Far more bitter than typical.
How we measure this

Two thresholds are at work here:

  • The signature list shows notes that recur in at least 6% of this brewery's beers. A low bar — enough to flag a pattern, not high enough to call it an exclusive trait.
  • The peer comparison below shows only notes where this brewery's coverage differs from similar breweries by at least 20 percentage points. A higher bar — enough to call a real difference, not a nudge.

A note can appear on the signature list without appearing in the peer comparison: it recurs here, but similar breweries do the same thing.

Brewery performance
How their beers place in the hopIQ ranking.
Top 26%
average beer performance
0
beers in the Top 100
12 / 12
beers above the median
#1391
best ranked beer
Sapporo Fuyumonogatari

Their beers place in the Top 26% of the catalogue on average, across 12 ranked beers. Consistent rather than spiky — no single standout carrying the rest.

Similar Breweries

hopIQ exclusive

Based on style overlap and flavor profile

Sternquell-Brauerei
Germany
95%match
Damm
Spain
93%match
Birra Peroni
Italy
93%match

About Sapporo Brewery

Sapporo traces its origins to the Kaitakushi Brewery, which the Hokkaido development commission opened in Sapporo in 1876 under brewer Seibei Nakagawa, who had learned lager brewing in Germany. The cold northern climate suited bottom fermentation, and the red star on the labels dates from that founding era. Today the company is headquartered in Ebisu, Tokyo, runs several breweries in Japan and has its international lager brewed in North America and Vietnam. In 1984 its hop breeders registered Sorachi Ace.

Other breweries from Japan

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Location
Sapporo · Japan
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