Kirin Brewery Co. said Tuesday it will recall the low-alcohol beerlike beverage Buckler because some bottles contain insufficiently sterilized yeast.
Kirin sells Buckler, imported from Heineken N.V. of the Netherlands, as a "drink that tastes like beer." Buckler contains less than 0.5 percent alcohol, but the bottles containing improperly sterilized yeast could contain more alcohol, it said.
Beer must have more than 1 percent alcohol to be sold as such in Japan.
Around 40,000 to 50,000 cases of 330-ml Buckler bottles are on the shelves in the Japanese market. One case contains 24 bottles.
Kirin received a report of a turbid drink from a store earlier this month, and after checking 320,000 bottles of Buckler, it found 86 were murky.
Kirin then tested 30 of the 86 and found that one bottle had more than 1 percent alcohol.