Microbrewed Adventures - Charles Papazian [100]
I asked myself, where is anyone doing anything to develop a culture of beer enjoyment and diversity?
What frightened me were not the huge investments multinational companies have made, but the logic and research behind their decisions. In our 12 days of visiting brewing companies we talked with experts representing the Chinese, Danes, Americans, Japanese, Germans, British, Irish and others in Beijing, Shanghai, Qingdao and Hong Kong. Our experiences and the information we received created an overload and posed more questions than they answered, until those last few pints of Ruddles, Speckled Hen and Guinness during our final day’s conversations in Hong Kong. There, it all seemed to come together. It began to make some sense. We knew we were not experts, but the diversity of experiences, conversations, beers, breweries, cultures and perspectives we observed made us all wonder how anyone could endeavor to start a company or enter a new market without inviting diversity and pondering the questions asked in their research. The key to success seemed to hinge on truly becoming involved, immersing yourself in the research and the culture you were trying to win over to your beer. What we observed, with a few small exceptions, seemed to display a disregard for the true nature of the potential beer drinkers themselves.
It seemed clear that on a larger scale, companies didn’t understand the situation, they simply threw money around. People always smile when there’s money to pick up, but then they go home and couldn’t care less about why it was there to find. On the large-company scale you are bound by the reality that you will make big mistakes and encounter unforeseen gnarly situations. We heard plenty about the ridiculous mistakes companies had made, simply because they hadn’t really made the effort to “be there” and understand what was actually going on.
Still, there were several encouraging beer experiences that seemed to highlight our group’s hopes for the future.
We visited China’s largest brewery, the Yanjing Brewery. Its expansive halls and buildings are built of marble. It reminded us of India’s Taj Majal. Yanjing has an annual production capacity of 9 million hectoliters and has 7,800 employees. Their beer is one of the least expensive in the marketplace, and they dominate the Beijing area market. They claim to be profitable. During our visit in mid-November, the place looked empty and was not in production. We learned that most Chinese do not drink beer in the wintertime. In their tasting room we were offered tea, not beer.
Enjoying ten-dollar liters of craft beer in Beijing
On our return to Beijing, our bus passed by a small building where we all noticed gleaming copper and stainless steel tanks in a restaurant window. That evening several of us embarked on an unscheduled adventure, returning to the Duck and Dark to enjoy a brewpub-brewed pils and dark beer, served fresh from tank “pigtails.” A completely local establishment, there was no English spoken there. The dark was excellent. The place was empty.
Earlier we had enjoyed the Paulaner Brauhaus, a small brewpub in the Kempinski Hotel in Beijing where in 1997, 70 percent of their customers were foreigners. By 1999, 70 percent of their customers were local Chinese, paying $8 to $10 a liter for their unfiltered German-style Helles, Oktoberfest, pils and Weizen. Compare that with about 20 cents a liter for local beer in the supermarkets and you begin to understand how bewildering things can be. Days later, at a Guinness pub in Shanghai, we heard the same statistics—a 70 percent turnaround from foreigners to locals. These establishments serving specialty or import-style beers are few, but they succeed in their own super-micro way. We were told that there are eight brewpubs in Beijing, but we suspect there are more.
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