What other travelers are saying about Sapporo Beer Museum
The Sapporo Beer Museum is an absolute must-visit! I love that it’s the original site, which adds so much authenticity and charm to the experience. The exhibits do an amazing job of explaining the history of Sapporo Beer, from its beginnings to becoming a globally recognized brand. Whether you’re a beer lover or just enjoy learning about history, this place offers a perfect blend of both. Don’t forget to try a tasting at the end—it’s the cherry on top of an already fantastic visit!
The outside of the beer museum was quaint and beautiful photo spot in winter. There's a self and premium tour available. Premium tour was fully booked by the time we arrived. If you do a self tour, the narrative text is in Japanese, so do grab one of those English explanatory cards to walk around the exhibits. The museum tour can be real quick, and then you will end up at the Sapporo Brewery gift shop, which sells a lot of munchies and paraphernalia. Near the shop is a counter where you go if you had reserved a place at their 3 jingisukan (Genghis Khan) style restaurants. If you have not reserved, you can go to the no reservations line for immediate seating on availability.
All in all, a nice short side trip.
Tl;dr: would recommend a bit of history for the beer lovers.
Being in Sapporo, and enjoy drinking beer, we thoroughly enjoyed our visit to the Sapporo beer museum. It was easy to get to from Sapporo station or you could get a taxi from Sapporo city central for around ¥1500. The museum tour is free, and although the guided tour is only in Japanese, you could either go to their website to get the English, Korean, or Mandarin translations, or we later found that they have the printed version of the translation at each station.
It was a small and simple museum with no fancy interactive media. Once we got to the souvenir shops, we found some items are very expensive. Fridge magnets were ¥800, more expensive than beer glasses!
We then went to the tasting beer hall and got the tasting paddle for ¥1000. Although busy, we didn't have to wait to get a table. We didn't have the chance to try the beer garden as it was getting dark and had to head off for dinner.
Went for a quick tour last minute at 4:00pm and barely finished at 5:00pm to head over for a quick beer tasting near the exit of the exhibition. We didn’t get a private tour since it was last minute but you can book online ahead of time otherwise spots are filled up quickly! However the self tour was sufficient and informative so it was still very enjoyable to learn about Sapporo and their achievements throughout the years. We saw other exciting dinner spots we wished we had tried but were too full otherwise hot pot looked great!
Pretty fun experience. We didn't buy the premium tour tickets (they were sold out so buy in advance if you want to) so just did the self guide tour which was pretty interesting and informative. We then shared the 3 beer tasting flight, a non alcoholic drink (which was pretty good!) and some cheese as a snack. We probably went through the museum in an hour and got to the tasting at the end by 11:15am ish which was already starting to get crowded.
We sat near the premium tour blocked off section so we could still hear and see what was happening (although it was all in Japanese). I believe you each get a tasting flight as part of the experience which would've been too much better for the two of us anyway without having lunch yet. But I would recommend going early because the crowds seemed to only grow, especially by the gift shop where things were starting to get sold out (though they could refill later in the day). The gift shop was pretty nice and had a decent selection of Sapporo branded merch and glasses as well as Hokkaido snacks. Overall decent to go out of your way for half a day of exploring.
