Serving Beer the Way It Was Meant to Taste — Hetanoyokozuki, Kobe's Most Obsessive Craft Beer Bar

Push open the door and you'll find shelves lined with bottles on one side — and a drill press, a 3D printer, and various tools on the other. Not exactly what you'd expect from a bar.

This is Hetanoyokozuki — a bar tucked into Ninomiya, Kobe.

The owner, who goes by Maury, is almost always tinkering with something. In his mid-twenties, he let go of his dream of owning a repair garage and crossed over into the hospitality world. But he never once put down his tools.

Keeping the First Sip as Good as the Last

The bar's name — Hetanoyokozuki — is a Japanese phrase for someone who throws themselves into something they love despite not being an expert. A passionate amateur. Maury laughs about it: "As far as real beer nerds and enthusiasts go, they probably think I don't know much."

But look at the tap setup and the obsession becomes immediately clear.

The taps are mounted inside a refrigerator. The beer lines are shorter and narrower than industry standard — a deliberate engineering choice that maintains pressure balance and keeps the beer from degrading before it reaches the glass. Maury believes there are fewer than three craft beer bars in all of Japan using this method.

"If the beer that arrives here is a 10 out of 10, I want to pour it as close to a 10 as possible. I don't want to serve an 8 or a 7."

The goal is simple and uncompromising: don't let the beer get worse between the brewery and the glass.

The Mechanic's Mindset — "Pour a 10, not a 7"

Maury was a mechanic by trade. He restored and modified classic cars, and had always imagined opening his own garage one day.

But the industry changed around him. Cars became increasingly computerized, and the capital investment required for a private shop ballooned beyond reach. "I just kind of let it go and thought, OK, what else do I love?" What came to mind was Belgian beer.

He made the leap into hospitality in his mid-to-late twenties, opening his first place near the Higashimon area of Sannomiya.

The career changed. The mechanic's instincts didn't. One thing always nagged at him about serving craft beer: the first pour from a tap always needs to be discarded — it's warm, sitting in the line. He hated that. "It felt like such a waste. Someone put real effort into making that beer, and you just dump it."

So he figured out how to stop it from happening. The answer was putting the taps inside the fridge. If a commercial solution didn't exist, he'd make the parts himself. "If it doesn't exist, build it" — that was his rule as a mechanic, and it's still his rule now.

Everything Handmade — From the Walls to the Lamps

Look around the bar and you'll find the traces of those hands everywhere.

He re-insulated the walls himself. He ran the plumbing and wiring himself. The lamp hanging at the end of the counter? Cut from the bottom of a bottle using a diamond cutter. When asked if he had any experience with that sort of work, Maury just laughed: "I figured it'd work out somehow."

Is he like this even during business hours? "Pretty much always working on something. When a customer comes in I'll clean up and wipe down, then go back to it."

Beer server components, motorcycle parts, custom brackets — they all get made here. When he thinks "this could work better," he just makes it. If the market doesn't offer what he needs, he builds it.

"We Don't Really Have Normal Drinks" — and He Means It

The lineup: 9 craft beer taps, 100+ Islay whiskies, around 20 absinthes, sake, and Guinness.

"Everything in this bar is just stuff I personally love."

Belgian beer got him started. Then he fell into craft beer. Then Islay whisky. Then somehow absinthe joined the party. Every new obsession added a shelf. On his Google listing, he wrote the description himself: "We don't really have normal drinks 🙄"

The craft beer leans heavily toward clear IPAs — not exactly crowd-pleasing. Occasionally someone walks in for the look of the place and walks back out when they realize there's nothing familiar to order. That doesn't bother him.

"I'd love for the right people to find us."

What Comes Next Here

"For now, in this space, I kind of want to stop doing food."

What Maury is thinking about instead: renting out the kitchen to other people.

"It'd be interesting to have the kitchen rotate by the day — like, Monday is someone's day, Wednesday is someone else's. I just want to focus on the drinks. Pour beer, make cocktails, that's it."

Food is welcome as a bring-in or an Uber order — many of his regulars already do exactly that.

The Invitation: Try Things, Fail a Little, Go Deeper

Before wrapping up, Maury offered a thought for anyone curious about the world of craft drinks:

"Don't be afraid to reach around and try things. The worst that happens is you spend a thousand or two yen on something you don't like."

It's not even about coming to this bar specifically. He just wants people to drink more curiously — to start noticing the difference between something good and something great.

"Craft beer, whisky, wine — there's a layer you can only access after some experience. I want people to put in the time to get there. Dig into it a little."

Someday: A Garage Where You Can Drink and Wrench

The current lease is fixed-term. He has about five years left in this space.

What he wants to do next has been clear in his mind for a long time.

"I want something like a garage. Where I can work on my own stuff, and customers can bring their cars in and work alongside me. And there's a corner where you can have a drink."

A space big enough to drive a car into. Tools available. Sober use only. Someone always making something while the beer is being poured. That's the final form of Hetanoyokozuki.

He gave up on owning a repair shop once. Became a bar owner instead. But never put down the tools. He even built a go-kart by hand, entered a Red Bull Soapbox Race, and took second place. Making things and playing with ideas are inseparable for him. The space doesn't exist yet. But the shape of the dream has been fixed for a long time.

The one in the black helmet is Maury.

The garage packed with childhood dreams is still somewhere in the future. But tonight, as always, in a small corner of Kobe's Ninomiya, Maury is pouring beer into a glass — every drop as good as the day it arrived.

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Hetanoyokozuki

• 📍 Kansai Bldg 1F, 4-7-9 Kotonocho, Chuo Ward, Kobe
• 👤 1–2 guests recommended, max 3
• 🚬 No smoking, no perfume (smoking also prohibited outside the entrance)
• 📱 Instagram: @maltbar_hetayoko