Can. Pours a medium brown with ruby highlites and a nice light tan head. Aroma is sweet malt with a light roast note as well. Brown sugar and toasted crackers are there, too. Aroma isn’t bad, but it’s very unnoticeable. Mouth is thin and creamy. Has a pleasent, though not remarkable, flavor. Sweet malt, brown sugar, and a metallic edge. Finishes with more metal than anything. Won’t be missed.

Happo-shu Namakuro. "Nama" means draft, "kuro" means dark. Can bought in Japan. Dark brown colour with a very short head. Aroma is sweet, weak chocolate with some hoppiness. The flavour is bitter-sweet, rather waterish, has some cheapish chocolate, a slight maltiness and ends with a waterish sweetish choco finish. Tried it, no more of that. A cheap brew with only 25% malt.

This one was a mystery... it appeared to be a step above the standard Japanese macro, but had a lot of very macro-esque traits. Poured a dark chocolate brown (almost black) color... fizzy, generous head, some lacing on the glass. Aroma of sweet malts and ...corn? An extremely light aroma, almost non-existent... I had to try really hard to extract some adjectives from this portion of the tasting. Flavors were malty, grainy, and sweet with (maybe) a tiny hint of chocolate. Mouthfeel was crisp and light, not as watery as other Japanese macros. But I can’t say it was "substantial" in any way. Easy to drink, probably (so far) one of my top choices for macros here in Japan. But that’s not saying much.

bittersweet indeed, a bit lively on the tongue, a bit metallic, roasty-burnt and grainy-toasty, a hint of chocolate... not bad, but not great--somewhat decent brew... and i’d actually much rather have this than my recent rates of the "special" michelob and budweiser.

I added and rated this beer some time ago, but it was dropped from the database. I assume because someone thought that this and "Kuro Nama" were the same beer, oddly enough they’re two tottaly different brews. Anyways, glad to see Josh re-added this one back so I can re-rate it. A clear medium Brown with Ruby edges, not much for a head, off-white and fades fast. Mild malt flavors with a metallic tinge. A slightly copperish sweet aftertaste. Not my favorite Kirin Macro but good enough to wash down spicy Kimchee Ramen with!