Shanghai's craft beer scene

Shanghai’s micro-brew and craft beer scene is a fantastic one to dive into. From Pudong’s The BREW to Fumin Lu’s Dr Beer to the two branches each of Boxing Cat Brewery and Shanghai Brewery, all of the prominent micro-brew bars here have two things in common. Firstly, they make top quality ales, all brewed here in the city, that have proved a hit with the foreign swigging crowd and a rapidly increasing amount of locals. And secondly, their brew operations are all run by expats flown into China for their expertise.

With an increase in the amount of locals getting into craft beer, it might seem odd that there hasn’t been a similar increase in the amount of Chinese-brewed beer. Yet despite the expat-run micro-brews dominating, and imports from Europe and the US being favoured above local brands at bottle-serving bars, many are hoping a shift could be on the horizon.

‘We always want to come across as a China-based micro-brew,’ declares Yan ‘Master’ Gao (pictured below), head of the Master Gao brewery based in Nanjing. Established in 2008, it was the first Chinese-owned micro-brewery in the country. With other China-owned breweries such as Harvest Moon and Qingdao’s Strong Ale Works following in his footsteps, Master Gao has made his business a success by earning a reputation for making arguably the finest beer from a Chinese-owned micro-brewery. ‘The market is huge,’ he says. ‘Once we put good beer in people’s hands, open-minded customers will take China’s beers well. They just haven’t had the chance to drink a China-brewed craft beer before.’

Gao’s optimism is backed up in part by the fact that expat-led micro-breweries in Shanghai have seen a huge increase in the amount of Chinese drinkers getting into their beer. Leon Mickelson of The BREW says around 40 per cent of his drinkers are local, a figure double his estimated percentage for when he started up the bar in 2011. ‘As the premium markets grow here, craft beer is going to grow with them – craft beer is a premium product,’ he says, bolstered by the fact that he charges almost 70RMB for a pint of top-class beer. ‘As people’s palates develop, their awareness increases.’

As Shanghai’s locals have had a few years to get introduced to craft beer at venues such as The BREW, they have become more adventurous in their tasting habits. However, locally-brewed craft beer has remained a minority pursuit, with Master Gao only stocking his beer in one venue in the city, the tiny Jackie’s Beer Nest. Fraser Kennedy, who started his role as brewmaster at Dr Beer on Fumin Lu six months ago, points to international brand recognition as one reason for this. ‘Imported products have traditionally been at the top end in Shanghai,’ he says. ‘So if people wanted to look good they’d go for, say, Heineken or Guinness. It’s hard to say if people could be as loyal to a local brand at the moment, but I do think that people here are starting to realise that China has the ability to produce this. If they realised that Chinese beer could one day be world standard, they’d get behind it.’

All the brewmasters agree that education is key to getting to this point. Master Gao has published a book, Get Your Own Brew, aimed at Chinese people attempting to home brew beer. And while all acknowledge that the standard of formal brewing education here needs to improve, many of the expat brewers are keen to encourage their Chinese counterparts. Mickelson will be lecturing at Shandong Province Light Industry University in Jinan this year, while up in Beijing, Carl Setzer of Great Leap Brewing points out that successful Chinese-owned micro-brews and bars in the capital such as Tipsy Face and NBeer Pub show local successes can be achieved. ‘In Beijing people are more adventurous,’ he says. ‘They will give a brand a shot, so it’s better for Chinese brews. These guys are struggling to increase in size, but we’re doing everything we can to help them.’

Yin Hai, who runs both Tipsy Face and NBeer Pub, is skeptical about similar scenes being replicated in Shanghai in 2014. ‘We just had a Beijing home brewing festival,’ he says, ‘and most participants were Chinese. This wouldn’t happen in Shanghai for at least another year. In Shanghai people admire foreign stuff. In Beijing they like Chinese things.’

Michael Jordan of Shanghai’s Boxing Cat Brewery works on in-house service in order to increase local interest in craft beer generally, if not Chinese-brewed ale. ‘We try to educate local customers,’ he says. ‘We train staff to have dialogue about the beers. Plus we have some beers more suited to local palates such as Amber Logger, which at five per cent is strong compared to Tsingtao, but on a craft beer level, that’s average. ’

Jackie Zhou, owner of China craft beer-stocking venue Jackie’s Beer Nest, is confident this increase in interest will soon allow China brews to thrive in Shanghai as well as the capital. ‘When I opened, my customers were 80 per cent expat, now they’re 80 per cent local,’ he says. ‘They used to think that German beer was some kind of standard, but we’ve told them that beer is regional and you have to try it. I have a plan: I want to make my own beer here, it’s my life dream. I’ll go slow so I can make sure I brew it well, but I’ll do it in 2014.’