Coedo Brewery, based in Japan’s Saitama Prefecture, doesn’t exactly get wide distribution. We should give thanks to beer festivals and anniversary parties, which are hotbeds for rare kegs. On January 22, a day with torrential rains in L.A., Ladyface Ale Companie hosted their 7th anniversary party. The event featured live music from Whiskey Sunday by the brewery’s “Tax Determination Tanks” and plenty of beer on tap at the bar and in the brewhouse. Ticket holders received a whopping 20 tastes of beer. I really enjoyed The Shepherdess, a 9.7% ABV Belgian barleywine aged for 20 months in red wine barrels that Ladyface brewed for the occasion. Crooked Stave Petite Sour Peach, a 4.5% ABV American wild ale aged over oak with Colorado peaches, was beautifully tart. I was most mesmerized by Coedo Tsuyu Saison, a 9% ABV saison collaboration with Stone Brewing and New Zealand’s Garage Project.

Drinking the beer was like talking a walk in the woods on a drizzly fall day. The saison incorporates sweet tart ume (plums) and red perilla leaf before aging in New Zealand chardonnay barrels. They named tsuyu named for the gentle “plum rain” that falls in Japan as the harvest ripens. I’d gladly walk in that precipitation anytime, though that’s not possible.