Adams Street Brewery releases rice lager honoring White Sox star Murakami

Inside The Berghoff at 17 W Adams St in Chicago’s Loop, Adams Street Brewery has turned Munetaka Murakami’s White Sox arrival into something drinkable: a Japanese rice lager called South-Side Sama. Untappd lists the beer as South-Side Sama, a lager in the Japanese rice style, and the brewery sits right where the club’s baseball and beer histories meet.

That matters because The Berghoff is not just another taproom with a novelty tie-in. The restaurant traces its beer roots to 1893, when Herman Berghoff first sold Berghoff Beer outside the World’s Columbian Exposition, and says the restaurant opened in 1898. After Prohibition, it became the place that landed Chicago’s first liquor license in 1933. The bar menu now bills Adams Street Brewery as supplying freshly brewed in-house pints, which makes a Murakami tribute feel less like a one-off promotion and more like a local brewer working inside a century-old beer address.

The choice of style fits the story. A Japanese rice lager is a smart canvas for a player like Murakami because it points toward a crisp, lighter-bodied beer rather than a heavy, hop-loaded gimmick. Rice in the grist usually means a cleaner finish and a leaner profile, the kind of beer you can actually imagine ordering after nine innings instead of just photographing once and forgetting.

Murakami’s on-field start has given the beer real momentum. The White Sox signed him to a two-year, $34 million deal, and he debuted on March 26, 2026. He became the fourth player from Japan to suit up for the White Sox, following Kosuke Fukudome, Tadahito Iguchi and Shingo Takatsu. Takatsu was the first Japanese-born player in franchise history, and he also managed Murakami in Japan with Yakult, which gives this Chicago-Japan connection a deeper baseball lineage than a simple marketing stunt.

White Sox fans have already made Murakami part of the daily conversation at Rate Field. MLB reported a raucous reaction when his name was announced in the lineup, and by April 27, 2026, Murakami had an MLB-leading 12 home runs. One of those shots traveled 426 feet with a 113 mph exit velocity, the sort of Statcast number that turns a beer tribute into a cultural snapshot. South-Side Sama works because it captures that moment: a Chicago brewery, a Japanese-style lager and a star hitter who has already changed the way the South Side sounds on game day.