SENDAI -- Kirin Brewery Co. resumed operations at its Sendai site on Sept. 26, more than six months after it was heavily damaged by the March 11 tsunami.
SENDAI -- Kirin Brewery Co. resumed operations at its Sendai site on Sept. 26, more than six months after it was heavily damaged by the March 11 tsunami.
Shipments from the brewery will start on Nov. 2 and the beer will be on shop shelves from Nov. 9.
Kirin aims initially to restore 60 percent of its pre-disaster production level.
Reconstructing the plant is estimated to have cost the company about 5 billion yen ($65.4 million).
A limited-edition version of Kirin's Ichibanshibori draft beer will use hops harvested in Tono, Iwate Prefecture, which was also hit by the earthquake.
Toshiaki Honda, Tono's mayor, put hops into a kettle at the brewery in an opening ceremony held around noon on Sept. 26. Wort making, the first step of the brewing process, had started before dawn.
The Sendai plant will produce 1.6 million large bottles of the limited-edition Ichibanshibori beer, more than 10 percent of the 13.2 million bottles produced across the country.
The product will be shipped to six prefectures in the Tohoku region, Hokkaido and part of Niigata Prefecture.
"We had not expected that we would be able to resume production so soon after the disaster," said Noriya Yokota, the plant manager. "We put our heart into this beer as much as ever."