Coedo Brewery

COEDO was founded early in the 1970s by a family that started organic farming in the city of Kawagoe were agriculture has been the core industry for hundreds of years. Here the historical approach to keeping the soil healthy is by growing barley as green manure, so the idea of utilizing this unused barley to produce beer came up. 

Unfortunately, there are no independent malting processing companies in Japan, or for that matter, enough wheat cultivated locally for a malt-producer. However, this led the family to come up with the idea to utilize sweet potato which was, and still is one of the most popular and well known agricultural produce from the region to make beer.

The sweet potato used would be the ones which were thrown away simply because their size and shape are not ideal for the customers’ eyes at the retail shops, assuring an eco-friendly sustainable approach to the business.

Coedo succeeded to develop the recipe of the world's first sweet potato beer in 1996. This beer “Beniaka” was the first brewed at COEDO.