Kirin's Frozen Foam Draft Beer: When Beer Meets Soft Serve
When we visited Asia's largest food and beverages expo, FoodEx, a few weeks ago, we found a few products available in Japan that we wish also are readily available Stateside. To the list, which currently includes ridiculously cute and functional packaging and a street called Ramen, we add Kirin's new draft beer, Ichiban Shibori Frozen Draft. According to Gizmodo and Beer Street Journal, the beer company has developed a special beer foam machine in which "air is blown into the beer to fluff up the head, and then flash chilled" using a a method it calls "Frozen Agitation."
Screenshot from Kirin's video for Ichiban Shibori Frozen Draft Kirin's Ichiban Shibori Frozen Draft
The resulting head of foam is swirled onto a pint of beer like soft serve dispensed into a waffle cone. At about -5 degrees Celsius/23 degrees Fahrenheit, the foam acts as a "lid" on the beer and will keep it chilled for up to half an hour. This means you can take your time to really savor and appreciate the beer. Or, you do the more fun thing and eat the foam like it's a wonderful cloud of sorbet.
For now, Kirin is just testing the concept in Tokyo, with plans to roll out the beer in Asia over the next year. Until it's released here, then, you'll have to make do with Kirin's video for Ichiban Shibori Frozen Draft. It's in Japanese -- Google Translate tells us the title of the video is "New experience of draft beer! Ichiban Shibori frozen" -- but you should get the idea.
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