Raspberry Fruit Puree for the Gold!

On November 1, the International Beer Cup (IBC), one of Japan’s most prestigious beer competitions, announced its list of winners for 2020.  Among the breweries receiving gold medals was Brewmin’, a small brewery from Toyama, Oregon’s sister prefecture (state) and location of Hokusei North America’s parent company’s home office.

Strengthening the Brewmin’ – Hokusei connection is the fact that the young brewery received its award in the Belgian-Style Fruit Beer category, which is characterized by the use of Belgian yeast strains and fruit — in Brewmin’s case, the fruit was raspberry puree exported to Japan by Hokusei.

Starting in 2019, Hokusei North America has partnered with Oregon Fruit Products (Salem, Ore.) to market and ship aseptic fruit purees to the Japanese craft beer market.  The inaugural shipment of the Oregon-made purees coincided with Oregon Fruit Product’s participation in Oregon Governor Kate Brown’s trade mission to Japan in November, 2019.

With that and subsequent shipments, Hokusei North America has exported several varieties of purees to Japan, including the raspberry puree used by Brewmin’ to take home the IBC gold medal. This Oregon-made puree uses raspberries carefully processed by Oregon Fruit Products to maintain the highest flavor quality levels. The purees’ shelf stability and flavor consistency make them a favorite with craft beer breweries around the world such as Brewmin’.

Chris Hodge, Director of Sales at Oregon Fruit Products shared, “We are sincerely honored that the Brewmin’ team chose Oregon Fruit Products raspberry puree as a key ingredient in this award winning world class beer. Cheers from our team to the talented brewers at Brewmin!”

“We are very proud to have contributed to a fellow Toyama company’s success” said Hokusei CEO, Shotaro Tomita.  Tomita-san also added that, “we look forward to our continued partnership with Oregon Fruit Products and sending more fruit puree from Oregon to Japan”.

The entire team at Hokusei North America would like to congratulate Brewmin’ for its recent win, and we look forward to more fruited beers from this up and coming brewery.