Wednesday, October 18, 2006

Not beer exactly...


Sorry for being an unclear photo because it was shot by cell phone with low graphic mode camera.

These are sort of beers and not beers exactly.

By the way, beers in Germany are different from the ones in Japan. Beers in Germany are made from only malt, hop and water; however, the ones in Japan contain corn or rice beside.

So the authority in Japan regards beers as drinks, made of more than 67% of malt, unlike 100% in Germany.

Next, what is the difference between Japanese beers and "sort of beers"? They contain less than 67% of malt. These flavor is just like beer, but not so tasty as a real beer.

Why isn't malt so popular? Because the tax rate varies up to the percentage of malt in beer. The less percentage of malt, the less tax rate.

Here is an example:
A beer of 350 ml is 218 JPY and 78 JPY out of 218 is tax.
Sort of beer, less than 25% of malt, of 350 ml is 145 JPY and only 37 JPY out of 145 JPY is tax.

In short, the tax of the beer is twice than that of "sort of beers".

The companies make malt less in beer since they want to sell them at low price.

Here is the real problem....
Now "sort of beers" are getting popular in Japan since they are cheaper. So the tax income of beer is getting low. Then the government have largely raised taxes on "sort of beer", on May this year! (Strictly speaking, it means that some of "sort of beers" and most are the same tax rate) Incredible!! Though I do not like beer so much...

8 Comments:

At 8:12 PM, Blogger Pod said...

hello. i liked the Japanese beer. yum. thanks for your visit!

 
At 10:12 PM, Blogger Jing said...

beers....:)
no ideas about that now.
but when i was in college, i liked to drink beer too. Um..some kind of light taste beer is nice...:D
now i dont drink anymore..for i am old!! hahahah...

...Jing

 
At 4:21 AM, Blogger Ben Nakagawa said...

Interesting Macky,
So what is the posinty of the "sort of beer" now?

 
At 4:22 AM, Blogger Ben Nakagawa said...

Sorry it should read:

... "what is the point of the" ...

 
At 8:16 AM, Blogger Felicia said...

I'll drink sake wine instead!

 
At 1:32 PM, Blogger midnitebara said...

you seem to be an expert on beer. I dont drink beer a lot so I don't really know the difference, I prefer wine. But if someone insist we drink beer, I prefer asahi than kirin. kirin is so nigai.!!

enjoy the rest of the week!

 
At 2:32 PM, Blogger J. Andrew Lockhart said...

Back in my "youth" I had some Japanese beer and liked it a lot. :)

 
At 1:35 AM, Blogger Unknown said...

I don't like beers so much, but like dark beer:-)

ben: This "sort of beers", called Happo-shu, is the product of our tax system, which is very interesting to me. If this tax system was different, this would never exist. This is not tasty so much yet cheap because of the system.

Thinking this tax-rising as a maker, this system will damage some of Happo-shu devastatingly. This reform make the tax rate of some of Happo-shu being about the same rate of beers. So the prices of some of happo-shu are need to rise as much as beers. Then, some of happo-shu has lost the raison d'etre....

 

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