Head’s up! Craft beers making gains in China
SHANGHAI — People in China drink a quarter of all beer worldwide, and smallbatch brewers and giant multinationals are cashing in. Though craft beer is far from upstaging local beer behemoths like Tsingtao that dominate the $28 billion national beer market, it is rising in popularity as small breweries open up in China’s major metropolitan areas like Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen.
Craft beers are typically more expensive than mass-market, lowalcohol content brews like Budweiser and China’s Yanjing. But as China’s middle class grows, so too does its tastes for finer products.
Panda Beer, Little General, Flying Fist IPA and Mandarin Wheat were among the offerings last week at the 2018 Craft Beer of China Exhibition in Shanghai, which featured breweries like Rasenburg Beer, Myth Monkey Brewing, Lazy Taps, Goose Island and Boxing Cat Brewery. They shared tips on the latest technology and sales trends as people in China shift from legacy brews to more experimental, refined and expensive flavors.
From taps at the expo flowed creative mixes of flavors and traditions, a swirling cocktail of Chinese ingredients, barley, hops and spices from around the world.
“After drinking it (craft beer), it feels much better than the domestic industry beer, and then you just can’t leave it,” said Yu Shiqi, a 40-yearold craft beer consumer at the expo who dreams of brewing his own.
A couple of years ago, craft beer made up only 0.3 percent of total beer consumption. It has since risen to about 5 percent, said Darren Guo, one of the exhibition’s organizers, who expect to see 30 percent growth in the craft beer market every year until 2020. “Beer culture is pretty much on the beginning or starting level.”
Laurel Liu, sales director of Beijing’s Jing-A brewery, says she gets calls from small towns asking how to start a craft brewery.
“You don’t even expect them to have craft beer there, but now they do,” Liu said. “I’m really surprised and happy to see now that craft beer in China is a thing and it’s really easier to access these products now.”
More money was spent on beer in China than the U.S. in 2017, according to beer industry research firm Drink Sector. Craft breweries were “rapidly increasing” although foreign imports continue to dominate the highend beer sector.
Anheuser-Busch InBev, the makers of Budweiser, has invested heavily in China, building breweries and acquiring craft breweries like Shanghai’s Boxing Cat. Anheuser Busch also owns Goose Island, which is in Chicago.
Michael Jordan, brewmaster at Boxing Cat, and his staff experiment with flavors like egg tart, green tea, peppercorn, chai, kiwi, hibiscus and sweet potato.
Jordan chalks up some of the success of craft brewing in China to President Xi Jinping sharing a pint of India Pale Ale in 2015 in Britain with then-Prime Minister David Cameron.
“The ‘Xi phenomenon’ really kind of opened people’s eyes to IPA,” he said.
Sam McNeil and Fu Ting are Associated Press writers.