2 Fun Hours Visiting the Sapporo Beer Museum in Japan

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I have to be honest with y’all. I don’t like beer. Like…at all. So why did I visit the Sapporo Beer Museum? Well…because I’m curious. I took a 10 day road trip through Hokkaido and ended up spending 4 of those days based in Sapporo. I primarily planned my Sapporo stop for the annual Sapporo Snow Festival, but naturally I also wanted to see what other things the city had in store.

Since I was joined by my Japanese friend E, who does happen to like beer AND museums, we decided to wet our taste buds learning about one of Japan’s most iconic beverage brands.

If you’re thinking of visiting the Sapporo Beer Museum when you’re in the area, here’s our experience from someone who doesn’t like beer, and one that does!

Logistics

Let’s get into all the basic info you need to know before you decide on visiting the Sapporo Beer Museum.

address	9 Chome-1-1 Kita 7 Johigashi, Higashi Ward, Sapporo, Hokkaido 065-8633, Japan show to taxi drivers: サッポロガーデンパーク
hours	11am-6pm daily (last admission 5:30pm) closed December 31st
price	self-guided: free guided tour: Adults 1000 JPY, middle school age through age 19, 500 JPY, elementary school age and under, free
kid-friendly?	technically, yes
wheel-chair accessible?	yes

First things first, the Sapporo Beer Museum is located in the city of Sapporo, which is in Japan’s northern island of Hokkaido. If you’ve never been to Japan, allow me to give you some perspective. Tokyo, Japan’s capital and where most travelers will fly into, is 16 hours away by car, 8 hours by bullet train, or a 2 hour flight.

However once you get to Sapporo, getting to the Sapporo Beer Museum is very easy. Thankfully, my favorite Japan travel tip is to use Google Maps to get everywhere because it’ll show you exactly how to get to your destination using public transit – including which exact bus or train platform to get on. There’s a bus stop at the Sapporo Beer Museum and the train station is like a 10 minute walk.

If you take a taxi, and you don’t speak Japanese, I’d recommend showing them the address in Japanese (サッポロガーデンパーク) since the driver may not be able to read the address in English/whatever language you speak. Or you can show them a picture of Sapporo beer, I’m sure they can guess where you want to go hahah.

Kids are also allowed, however the museum isn’t interactive (mostly just reading) and obviously they can’t drink, so it’s up to you if you want to add the Sapporo Beer Museum to your family’s itinerary. And last but not least, the museum did have elevators and ramps in their buildings. I visited in the winter, but it looked like the staff did a good job of clearing the stairs and ramps of snow.

Thankfully, the museum is open daily so it can fit in most people’s itinerary and best of all, you can visit for free! If you do the self-guided tour, which we did, you go through the exhibitions learning the history of brewing in Japan and the Sapporo brand and then you have access to the tasting hall (which you can then pay for drinks and snacks).

However, you can also opt to do a guided tour which will be much more in depth and (for those of legal age – 20 in Japan) include a drink I believe. However, if you want to go that route, I highly recommend getting tickets in advance because the guided tours do sell out.

Experience

So my friend and I showed up later in the day, around 5pm. Even for the self-guided tour, they stop admission at 5:30pm, so we got there just in time to have a full hour going through the museum. Now, it may have been because it was literally the end of the day, but the Sapporo Beer Museum didn’t feel crowded at all.

In fact, now that I think about it, that was definitely the reason.

At the front, there are rentable cubbies so you can store your stuff/stroller/luggage/etc etc. If you are taking a guided tour, you can head over to the reception area (there are signs) for your time slot. You can also take a shortcut to the onsite restaurant (they were sold out of tables during my visit) and the museum shop if you’re really short on time or have already visited.

For everyone else, you head downstairs to start the exhibit! You can either take the elevator down, or the staircase that winds around on of the giant brewing thing (pardon my lack of terminology) that really helps paint a picture of how large an operation this company is.

I won’t spoil all the details, but I thought the exhibit was very well laid out and easy to follow. It made sense chronologically, so even if you aren’t a huge beer fan, the history of it all was very fascinating and accessible to those of us with limited knowledge. I especially liked learning about brewing in Japan specifically, and how Sapporo became the cultural phenomenon it is today.

It’s not a very large exhibit at all. Depending on how much you like to digest can take anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour, or even less if you like to speed run (or read I suppose). There’s a restroom at the end too! After the educational bit, now is time for what most people visit the Sapporo Beer Museum for – Star Hall, aka the beer tasting hall!!!

You order at a self-serve kiosk and select the drinks and/or snacks you would like. The last order at the hall is 6:00pm, so again be mindful of the time if you’re visiting the Sapporo Beer Museum late like we did. It is also discouraged to head straight to the hall, so please go through the exhibition portion of the museum first to keep the flow of people moving in an orderly fashion.

If you are in a big group and there is a long line, I’d recommend the majority of your party go find a table while one or a few people order. It can be challenging to find a good seat when it’s busy, but seating time is generally limited to 30 minutes, so even if you have to wait, it won’t be that long. Since there was practically no line to order, my friend and I didn’t both splitting up.

For options, there is Sapporo beer, of course, including a flavor that you can only get at the Sapporo Beer Museum. Those are about 400-550 JYP. You can also opt to get an entire flight and do your own taste test for 1,200 JYP, which is what me and my friend bought.

Yes, I do not like beer and I bought a tasting flight. I know how that sounds. I’m a curious person, okay???

I also appreciate that they have non-alcoholic options, like Sapporo’s alcohol free beer, apple juice, corn tea, and the Hokkaido soda brand Ribbon Napolin (which I also ordered as a chaser haha). For snacks, there’s peanuts and cheese. So…not a full meal, but something salty to pair with the beer. And we’re in Hokkaido – you gotta get the cheese.

Once we ordered, we took our ticket from the machine and found a table.

As expected….the beer all tasted like beer to me hahah. I could not tell a difference. My friend however had a ball and could really find the intricate differences between the brews, and was even shocked at the one that ended up being her favorite.

To end our Sapporo Beer Museum tour, we left the hall and browsed through the museum shop. There were a lot of fun Sapporo Beer merch and souvenirs. If you are a fan of beer, you can buy some to take home as well as Hokkaido-based snacks. It’s a really cute shop. In total, we spent about an hour going through the Sapporo Beer Museum!

Food

There’s a lot of food options at the Sapporo Beer Museum, specifically four, which seemed like a lot considering it only took us an hour to get through the museum haha. It would have been cool to eat at one of them, but we already had food reservations in the city and also they were sold out hahah.

The iconic Kaitakushi-kan restaurant features Genghis Khan. No, not the actual guy, but it’s a Hokkaido specialty dish named after him since it is traditionally cooked on a grill shaped like Genghis Khan’s helmet. It’s very similar to Korean BBQ if you’ve ever had that before, but the star meat is lamb. We actually had plans that night for Genghis Khan at another restaurant, but if you’re already at the Sapporo Beer Museum, I’d recommend it!

The other restaurants are Garden Grill, biggest draw there is fresh lamb and crab tableside. There’s also Lilac which does Genghis Khan, but a smaller building than Kaitakushi-kan. Then there’s another food hall, Poplar Hall, that has all-you-can-eat menus.

Conclusion

To sum it up, even as a non-beer drinker, I quite enjoyed my short time at the Sapporo Beer Museum. I thought the information was well thought-out and easy to follow, and the tasting hall was a fun addition. Maybe that’s pretty standard at beer museums….I don’t know, I’ve never been to any others hahah.

If you do enjoy beer, then I highly highly recommend visiting the Sapporo Beer Museum and seeing the brewing process from not only a Japanese perspective, but a Hokkaido perspective because there is a difference.

If you don’t enjoy beer…well, you could probably skip it and not miss out on much. It is free though, and you could just go for the exhibition portion if you like museums. Either way, it’s an activity to consider for things to do in Sapporo!

Have you ever been to the Sapporo Beer Museum? What did you think? Let me know in the comments below!

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