Hitachino Nest Extra High (XH) 330ml x 24

When Toshiyuki and Youichi Kiuchi launched craft beer production in 1996, they were already custodians of a sake brewery founded in 1823 — and the XH (Extra High) Strong Ale is the expression where that lineage is most structurally present. Maturation takes place in shochu barrels — vessels made from distilled sake, carrying residual rice-spirit character into the beer's base malt structure in a way no European strong ale tradition replicates. The brewery sits at Nukada in Naka City, Ibaraki Prefecture, drawing on medium-soft well water on-site; Ibaraki historically supplied roughly 27% of Japan's domestic beer-barley crop, giving Kiuchi direct access to local grain heritage. Fermentation is conducted in stainless steel tanks at approximately 20°C, with malt milled on-site and saccharification resting approximately 40 minutes — a controlled, sake-informed precision applied to an ale format. At high ABV and shochu-cask finished, the XH sits outside every conventional strong-ale category: it is neither a Western barleywine nor a Belgian quad, but a Japanese hybrid that uses distilled-rice-spirit wood as its aging medium. For a brewery whose flagship White Ale moves 13 IBU and 5.5% ABV, the XH represents a deliberate transgression into intensity — the same house, opposite register.