Japan is facing a serious beer crisis. The emergency began on Monday, September 29 when the makers of the country’s most popular brew Asahi Super Dry announced it had suffered a massive cyberattack resulting in a nationwide “system failure.” The immediate fallout included a temporary shutdown of nearly all of Asahi Group’s 30 domestic breweries, as well a pause in ordering and shipping across Japan. Local vendors and business owners hoping for more information would also have to wait, since Asahi was forced to close its call centers and customer service desks.
There doesn’t appear to be a clear end in sight, either. According to the company’s update on Friday, October 3, Asahi has spent the past week working with Japanese cybercrime authorities while continuing to investigate at its Emergency Response Headquarters. That said, officials confirmed that the situation revolves around a ransomware attack, and that experts have found digital “traces suggesting a potential unauthorized transfer of data.”
The update continued, “As a result of the containment measures, operations across our domestic group companies—including order placement and product shipment—have been affected,“Additionally, we are currently unable to receive email communications from external sources.”
As the Financial Times (FT) reports, hackers are increasingly focusing on Japanese companies because of their comparatively weak cybersecurity defenses. The victims are also often more likely to simply pay the demanded amount than other targets. Last year, Japan’s National Police Agency tallied 222 confirmed ransomware cases, a 12 percent rise over the prior year. They also cautioned that those attacks likely composed only a small portion of the total number. In nearly half of those events, it took companies at least one month to recover their lost data. Despite a year-over-year decrease, the United States saw the most cyberattacks of any country in 2024 with 610 confirmed incidents.
FT estimates Asahi manufactures around 6.7 million large bottles of beer per day, but even those numbers don’t leave much wiggle room for a shutdown. Experts warn it’s likely that bars, retailers, and convenience stores could begin running out of Super Dry by the end of the weekend. In the meantime, Asahi is trialing a more analog approach to fulfill some of its most pressing orders, which include a number of other beverage and food products.
“Ensuring product supply to customers has been set as our top priority, and we have begun partial manual order processing and shipment,” Asahi said in its update regarding a temporary pen-and-paper fix.
The company hopes to gradually resume call center and customer service operations by next week, although there’s still no word on when the beer will start flowing again. Regardless, some of the damage is already here. Due to the cyberattack’s severity, Asahi was forced to indefinitely postpone eight new products including ginger ale, fruit soda, and protein bars.
If you’re looking for a glass half full situation, Asahi has repeatedly stressed that the booze emergency is at least only limited to Japan. If you live elsewhere, you should still be able to pour one out for the Super Dry Shortage of 2025. Just don’t let it all go to waste.
