Tap at Q-brick. Brown-orange with lace. Malty caramel nose, leafs, earth. Flavor has some toffee, minerally leaves, pine, chocolate. Good stuff.

5.5% North Island on tap at Hamamatsu Devil Craft. Crystal clear gold, filmy white head. It has a really nice floral, tropical fruit bouquet. Medium bodied with a sandy mouthfeel of tongue scraping bitterness. The taste is a bitter pine bark, then floral and earthy hop notes. It is listed as an American Wheat Ale. I like the nose more than the taste as it is too bitter for me. Perfect for hop heads. ---Rated via Beer Buddy for iPhone

Tap at Craft Heads, Tokyo. Golden color, good thick white head. Light grapefruity aroma. Light-bodied to medium-bodied. Grapefruity, pale malty flavor. Straightforward, clean.

Tap at Q-Brick. Said to be 4.5%. Nose of chocolate, orange, nice malt character. Nice black color. Lovely balance of slightly roasty chocolate malts and hops, good citrus flavor. Light, crisp and very drinkable. Maybe 6% is right. Slightly too rich for 4.5! Great.

On tap at Beer Keyaki Spring 2014. Shared by Chuwy. 6-7% A cloudy light gold. The texture’s pretty good. The flavor is wheatey but light on the hops for something with Indian in the name, a decent brew but below North Island’s usual standard I think.

Tap at Yellow Ape. Clear golden color with a fine head. Smoky nose, dry, a touch of peat, some citrus, biscuit malt. Nicely smoky flavor. Light fruity sweetness, citrus, peach, biscuit. Finished very dry and smoky, bitter. Very nice rauchbier with no caramel.

North Island collaboration with an assortment of bars. A black IPA, a great looking black pour with a filmy beige head with great staying power. A lovely floral hoppy bouquet plus creamy dark malts. The taste is piney bitterness, cracker, some vague cinnamon spiciness, dark malt notes and a lingering fairly neutral bitter quality with a good dose of chocolate.

On tap at 2nd Vine as part of my tasting set. Crystal clear gold with a thin filmy head, a nice citrus & floral hop bouquet rises from the glass - a bit gin like. Medium bodied, smokey I get some bacon wrapped asparagus notes very interesting. A tasty intriguing beer!

med brown color, big blood orange juice nose. The mouth is big hoppy, with nice malty back bone. Good balance well made, but odd hop notes.

Tap at 1020. A reddish brown ale hopped with NZ varietals and fermented with wine yeast. fine, thick head on top. Somewhat strange yeasty nose, wine, grapefruit, kiwi hops with a bit of catpiss. Fruity, hoppy, original flavor, seems a bit Belgian but not really, definitely tastes of wine, with chocolate, grapes, figs, caramel, and catpiss. This was very original and strange, and at first I was thrilled, but little by little I started to hate it. Weird. Can’t say it really worked.