As you may imagine, China puts away a lot of beer. In fact, as the world’s biggest beer market, the Chinese now swig 50 billion litres of the stuff per year. However, per capita consumption stands at around half that of the USA. That’s a lot of room for growth. Yet, as with everything, the Chinese are catching up; Market Research Group Minto has reported that China’s beer consumption is increasing by 10 to 20 percent per year. With such explosive potential, craft brews, both domestic and international, are popping up all over.
In a worldwide trend that transcends not only borders and nationalities but also genders, a most compelling piece of evidence for craft beer’s growing popularity is in the name itself; that it has replaced the term “micro-brewery” on account that they are simply no longer micro.
The Brewers Association of Colorado are a defensive and conservative bunch. According to them, an American craft brewer is small, independent and traditional:
- Small in so far as “an annual production of beer less than 2 million barrels”.
- Independent in so far as “less than 25% of the craft brewery is owned or controlled (or equivalent economic interest) by an alcoholic beverage industry member who is not themselves a craft brewer”.
- Traditional in so far as “a brewer who has either an all malt flagship (the beer which represents the greatest volume among that brewers brands) or has at least 50% of its volume in either all malt beers or in beers which use adjuncts to enhance rather than lighten flavor”.
The BAC has good reason to be concerned. With the popularisation of craft beer there are fears the major brewers will attempt take overs of the industry’s minnows, or themselves start offerings of “craft beer” that are little more than their flagship product with some food colouring and/or other artificial flavouring. China herself makes for an excellent case study; a domination of the market by the big brewers such as Snow, Tsingtao, Ha’erbin and Reeb that was only consolidated by mergers, aquisitions and joint ventures by/with international heavyweights InBev, Carlsberg and Anheuser-Busch meant no-one could compete with the technology, scale and price of their ubiquitous yet insipid concoctions.
Enough is enough. More and more people in China now have the disposable income and a discerning taste to choose forking out 10 times more dough for an original taste that not only makes for a good night out, but also a new educational experience.
Boxing Cat, Slowboat, Great Leap are all micro breweries that have set up hop recently in Beijing. Nearer to home, Shanghai Brewery started serving the suds last year and was chosen by That’s Shanghai as “Best New Bar in Shanghai 2012”. The icing on the cake is the third annual Kerry Beer Fest which took place on 14th September, whereby China’s 14 “major” craft brewers from not only Shanghai and Beijing but also our very own Nanjing and other second and even third tier cities, served up the latest creations of their artisans.
The craft beer revolution is still a microcosm in China; one outlet per million people in Beijing it is estimated. Elsewhere, it is also gaining a foothold once more, as it did many eons ago.
According to “A History of Beer and Brewing” by Ian Hornsey, early evidence shows that brewing in ancient Egypt was “largely regarded as a domestic chore, and therefore the domain of women, especially the steps of grinding the grain and straining of the mash”. It should not come as a surprise that around the same time China was also founding its brewing industry; evidence of the production of beer type alcoholic drinks has been discovered dating back to 7,000 BCE.
The latest edition of the UK’s Good Beer Guide, published last week, also notes that female brewers, or “brewsters” as they are known, are making a comeback. The fairer sex are now to be found taking on rolls across the brewing industry; afterall it is science, marketing and hospitality all rolled into one. Proving the point, the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA), which publishes the Good Beer Guide, reveals women now represent some 22 percent of its 150,000 membership, while 34 percent of British ladies confessed to trying real ale (up from 14 percent in the past three years).
In Nanjing, the resurgence of craft beers is best exemplified along Shanghai Lu. Brewsells recently opened up beside Blue Sky as a bar specialising in Belgium beers, pop into Lotus for a sandwich at lunchtime and you might well be washing it down with something of which your boss may not approve while spend an hour in Florentina and you will spy more than a few pretty Chinese lasses sampling “the craft”.
Just why are more ladies turning to the old man’s drink? The consensus is it’s the taste. Until the craft beer revolution, beer was lager or bitter. All the new and interesting flavours have just made it interesting; crafty beer if ever there were.
