Craft brews making headway(1)
As with the wine market, Chinese tastes are diversifying in the search for premium beer and established brewers and new microbreweries are slowly gaining a foothold in the nation's food industry
On the first Thursday night in January, customers were packed into Home Plate BBQ in the Sanyuanqiao neighborhood of Beijing like a pod of whales stuffed into a glass fishbowl. A young man with a bulky messenger bag walked up warily to the entrance.
"Is it even worth it?" he asked. "It looks like there isn't any space."
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Above: Slow Boat Brewery's plant in Beijing provides different styles of beer such as American pale ale and Pacific Northwest red ale. Below: One of the Boxing Cat Brewery restaurants in Shanghai, where consuming craft beer is growing in popularity. Photos Provided to China Daily |
Customers were indeed flowing in and out of the budding restaurant that dishes up American barbecue, but not simply because of the food. That night, the buzz was about Slow Boat Brewery, a micro-brew operation based in the capital that had collaborated with the restaurant to serve three styles of beer: an American pale ale, a Pacific Northwest red ale and an oatmeal stout.
"Last time we teamed up with the guys at Home Plate, we ran out of kegs," says Slow Boat Brewery co-founder Chandler Jurinka. "This time, we brought more."
The scene at Home Plate could be seen as a loose representation of the emerging premium beer market in China: Throngs of expatriates gathering loudly at a bar or restaurant and rejoicing over their discovery of handcrafted beer that tastes like home in a country dominated by inexpensive and light beer from Chinese brands such as Tsingtao or Yanjing.
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Throughout cosmopolitan cities of China - where brands like Carlsberg and Heineken have become ubiquitous and a growing number of premium foreign and domestic beers are lining bar and store shelves - microbrews are on the rise. As with the wine market, Chinese and foreign tastes are diversifying, and the beneficiaries have been not only bars and restaurants, but established beer brands and new microbreweries that are slowly gaining a foothold in the nation's food industry.
"We see enormous potential for craft beer in China," says brewmaster Michael Jordan, 39, who makes beers for the Boxing Cat Brewery in downtown Shanghai.
China is the biggest beer drinker in the world because of its population, with 44.7 million kiloliters of beer consumed in 2010, or about one-quarter of the global beer consumption. That figure has grown for eight straight years, according to Kirin Holdings Co Ltd, a Japan-based company. Consumption of premium beer in China is estimated to grow 12 percent annually through 2020, according to Asia Pacific Breweries.
