Tap Room BEER KOTAN

Tap Room BEER KOTAN is the Sapporo outpost of Hop Kotan Brewing, and its selling point is unusually literal: this is the only town in Hokkaido that grows hops commercially, and this is the bar where you drink the beer made from them.

Hop Kotan is based in Kamifurano, in the centre of the island, better known to most visitors for its lavender fields. The brewery was founded there in 2018 to work with the local hop harvest alongside imported varieties, and it produces an unusual volume of different beers — over seventy styles a year, with one or two new releases most weeks. Twelve of them are on tap here at any time, all house-brewed: typically three or four regulars plus six to nine limited runs, deliberately spread across styles so a flight actually tastes like a range rather than variations on a theme. High-ABV releases turn up more often than at most Japanese taprooms.

The bar opened in December 2020 on the third floor of the Parade Building, two or three minutes' walk from Odori Station behind PARCO. It is a bigger room than the usual Japanese craft bar — forty-one seats across a tap-facing counter, window seats, tables and a standing area built to feel like a British pub — with a green-tiled tap wall as the centrepiece and a terrace when the weather allows it.

The kitchen is built around the beer and around Kamifurano produce. The pork sagari, a skirt-steak cut that is a Kamifurano speciality, comes out on a hot iron plate; there are also house sausages, fish and chips, pizza and a weekly hot sandwich. Weekend opening from noon makes this one of the more reliable daytime craft options in central Sapporo.

Opening Hours
Mon–Fri: 5pm–11pm
Sat, Sun & public holidays: 12pm–11pm
No fixed closing day (food L.O. 10pm, drinks L.O. 10:30pm)