In the 1840s, he worked for five years as an apprentice to a German brewmaster a few blocks from his home before immigrating to the United States and changing his name to William Copeland.
[1][2] Moving to Yokohama, Japan in 1864, Copeland first worked in the dairy business and then set himself up as a brewer in 1869 with the Spring Valley Brewery.
It was located at the site of a natural spring next to the Amanuma Pond below the Yamate foreign residential neighborhood, where he dug a 210-meter cave into the side of a hill and used its low fixed temperature to help the beer mature.
Although Copeland showed talent as a beer brewer, he was a poor manager, and in 1884 Spring Valley Brewery was put up for public auction.
[5] After internal debate about the strategy to pursue craft beer, in 2015 the company opened a new brewery/restaurant location in Daikanyama (Tokyo)[6] on the newly cleared land of the formerly above-ground Toyoko rail line, which had been recently routed underground in 2013.