A beer company’s first step into chu-hi.

Hyoketsu arrived in Japanese shops on 11 July 2001. In a news release dated 19 April that year, Kirin Brewery announced “Kirin Chu-hi Hyoketsu Kajū” as the first product of its move from beer and happoshu into a full range of alcoholic drinks, and as its full-scale entry into the canned chu-hi market. The first two flavours were lemon and grapefruit, sold in 350ml and 500ml cans and aimed, the company said, at drinkers in their twenties and thirties, with a fresh taste and a young, refined image meant to win new customers as well as existing chu-hi drinkers.

The name translates roughly as “frozen juice,” and it describes the method Kirin promoted from the start: fruit juice pressed and then frozen without heating, which the company said kept the taste of fresh fruit. Japanese Wikipedia, citing the journalist Takashi Nagai’s 2006 book on the Japanese beer wars, says the drink was developed by a group at Kirin-Seagram — the group’s spirits company, now Kirin Distillery — with a whisky blender involved. Although Kirin sells it as a chu-hi, a category traditionally made with shochu, Hyoketsu is vodka-based; the same source says the group had no shochu licence or plant at the time, and that vodka, with less aroma of its own, suited the juice.

The first name did not last. In March 2002 Kirin said it would rename the drink “Kirin Chu-hi Hyoketsu,” dropping the word for juice, after customers said such drinks could be mistaken for soft drinks, and ahead of a voluntary labelling standard being prepared by the Japan Spirits & Liqueurs Makers Association. The new packs, shipped from April, carried larger lettering for the word “alcohol” and the strength.

Blue metal, cut like ice.

Hyoketsu’s identity is built on its can. Kirin’s 2001 launch release described the packaging as a modern design with a blue metallic base colour, and introduced a newly developed aluminium “diamond-cut can”, whose diamond-shaped facets appear when the can is opened. The facets, the company said, were meant to express the cold, refreshing image suggested by the name.

The can was not designed for Hyoketsu alone. In 2007 the can maker Toyo Seikan told the Japanese news site Excite Bit that its diamond-cut can drew on the “Miura fold,” a folding pattern developed by the Japanese engineer Koryo Miura, and that a prototype was finished in 1995, originally with coffee cans in mind; Kirin told the same site it chose the can for the crackling sound it makes on opening and for its cold, refreshing look. Kirin Beverage’s Fire coffee also used it, the article said.

Colour does the rest of the work. When Kirin changed the packs in 2002, it said it would strengthen the yellow of the lemon and the green of the grapefruit so that customers could tell the two apart more easily. On 21 February 2019 Kirin announced that the diamond-cut can would be registered as a three-dimensional trademark — a container with no words or graphics on it, which the company called very rare in the drinks and food industry. Ryutsu News reported that the can had been used since the 2001 launch, and that customers surveyed by Kirin in 2018 said its facets made them think of ice.

Advertising has relied on music and celebrities. Japanese Wikipedia lists campaigns featuring the group Perfume in 2011 and 2012, the slogan “Atarashiku ikō” (“let’s try something new”) from 2016 to 2019 with music by the Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra, “ALL is NEW!” from 2019 to 2023, and a 2023 campaign with the band SEKAI NO OWARI.

Design and documentation.

The seven brands in this group are all ready-to-drink names: Vizzy, Smirnoff Ice, Bacardi Breezer, Cutwater, Kirin Hyoketsu, Mike’s Hard Lemonade and Twisted Tea. Several of them come from companies better known for beer or wine. The Boston Beer Company, maker of Samuel Adams, first sold its hard iced tea in 2000 as BoDean’s Twisted Tea and renamed it Twisted Tea in 2001, the company says; Molson Coors launched Vizzy nationally in the United States in April 2020. Kirin Brewery launched Hyoketsu in Japan in 2001, according to a Kirin release of April 2016. Mike’s Hard Lemonade comes from the family-owned Mark Anthony group founded by Anthony von Mandl, which says it began in 1972 as a one-person wine importer.

Others sit inside spirits houses or were bought by one. Smirnoff Ice belongs to Diageo, and English Wikipedia notes that in the United States it is a malt beverage, while in many other markets it is made with Smirnoff vodka. Bacardi Breezer, which English Wikipedia describes as a premix of Bacardi rum, was launched in Britain in 1993, the same article says, citing the BBC. Cutwater was founded in San Diego in 2016 by former Ballast Point executives, FoodBev reported, and in February 2019 The Whiskey Wash reported its purchase by Anheuser-Busch.

A ready-to-drink brand’s identity is carried largely by a can, a name and a flavour list, and the same name can cover different recipes in different countries. Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — who launched it, who owns it now and how its packs have changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

From Shanghai to an unsweetened line.

Hyoketsu belongs to the Kirin group, whose beer business began in Yokohama in the nineteenth century. When the drink launched, it was sold by Kirin Brewery Company; in 2007 that company became the holding company Kirin Holdings, and its brewing business passed to a new Kirin Brewery Company, according to English Wikipedia. Japanese Wikipedia says production of the whole Hyoketsu range moved from Kirin Distillery to Kirin Brewery with shipments from January 2019.

Kirin took the brand abroad early. In a release dated 11 May 2005 it said Hyoketsu would go on sale in and around Shanghai from mid-June that year, made and sold under licence by a Kirin Beverage group company there, in lemon, grapefruit and green apple, and described the launch as a first step towards a global brand.

At home the range has grown around the original. Japanese Wikipedia lists a more indulgent “Premium” line, later discontinued, a “ZERO” line and a stronger “Strong” line; the “Tabisuru Hyoketsu” (“travelling Hyoketsu”) series, launched in 2017, reworks drinks found abroad. An unsweetened series, Hyoketsu Mutō, followed in October 2020, the same source says. In October 2026 Kirin’s Japanese website was running advertising for that unsweetened line.

For a design guide, Kirin Hyoketsu shows how a container can become the brand: a faceted can, registered as a trademark without any words on it. Compare Kirin, the beer brand of the same group, and Suntory, another Japanese drinks group. For this guide we use a metallic blue with lemon yellow and grapefruit green, with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Kirin Hyoketsu’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.