An American Movement Becomes a Global Phenomenon
The modern craft-brewing movement started in the United States, but it has since evolved into a global phenomenon. On nearly every populous continent, there are local markets where the beer game is changing. We’re going to take a look at many of those across Asia, Europe, and South America.
Japan
When it comes to craft-brewing industry development, Japan is, hands-down, way ahead of the rest of Asia (and many other parts of the world as well).
Year zero for craft brewing in Japan, many would agree, is 1996. This was right after the Japanese government changed the law, loosening the restrictions on beer brewing in the country. Many of the country’s top craft outfits started cranking out their products that year; a number of them had been producers of other alcoholic beverages that expanded their portfolios to include beer when it became economically feasible to do so.
The country’s booming scene even spawned its own bilingual magazine, Japan Beer Times, inviting locals and travelers who don’t speak the language to discover the wild and wonderful world of Japanese craft beer (as well as the far-flung international brewing traditions that inspire it).
The Breweries
Kiuchi
Kiuchi is the best-known Japanese producer, as it has a significant international presence—including in the US. The Ibaraki-based brewery might not be a household name among craft beer aficionados, but its flagship product line is: Hitachino Nest.
Kiuchi’s operation boasts more than 190 years of history, but only a fraction of that time has been devoted to beer making. The company began as a brewer of saké and a distiller of shochu, the native spirit of Japan, and continues to make those products to this day. But in 1996 it added craft beer to its repertoire. Its most visible product is Hitachino Nest White Ale, a Belgian-style witbier that has notes of coriander, orange peel, and nutmeg. Kiuchi also offers interpretations of other classic styles, like amber ale, stout, and India pale ale, as well as some decidedly homegrown innovations. Its Nipponia uses the Japanese breed of Kanego Golden barley, first developed in 1900, and combines that with a Japan-bred Sorachi Ace hop species. It’s easy to recognize the Hitachino Nest range; just look for the label with the cartoon owl.
Japan boasts one of the most developed craft beer scenes outside of the US.
Coedo
Based in Kawagoe, one of Coedo’s biggest claims to fame is its Beniaka beer, 75 percent of whose fermentable sugars are derived from sweet potatoes. Sweet potatoes are a hugely popular alcohol base throughout Japan. Sweet potato shochu is the top-selling variety of the spirit, far surpassing barley, rice, sugar cane, and buckwheat in popularity. Because most of its base comes from a source other than malt, it is classified as a happoshu—a low-malt beer. Beers in Japan are taxed based on their malt content, and many brewers produce lower-end beers with reduced malt content to minimize their tax burden and, therefore, their cost to consumers. Flavor, not cost-savings, was Coedo’s aim with Beniaka. Coedo’s beer portfolio also includes Kyara, an India pale lager, Ruri pilsner, Shiro wheat beer, and Shikkoku black lager.
Minoh
Minoh is the big local brewery for the Osaka area, located in its namesake town (more commonly known among locals as Mino-o) just outside the major city. In downtown Osaka, the brewery also runs a pair of bars known as Beer Belly, which serve as Minoh’s urban tasting rooms and the place to try some of its rare one-offs and experimental creations. The brewery is known for its imperial stout, as well as its stout proper, and accessible styles like weizen, pilsner, and pale ale. Minoh’s Cabernet ale marries the best of the wine and beer worlds—fermented grapes and malt.
Beer Belly in Osaka serves as the tasting room for Minoh Beer.
Tamamura-Honten (Shiga Kogen)
Tamamura-Honten started brewing the Shiga Kogen range in 2004 in the city of Yamanouchi in Nagano Prefecture. It’s quickly become a favorite of beer geeks worldwide, with a line that includes Miyama Blonde, House IPA, Shiga Kogen Pale Ale, and Shiga Kogen Porter.
Yo-Ho Brewing Company
Another of the Class of ’96 brewers, Yo-Ho was launched as a subsidiary of Hoshino Resort Co., a hospitality management corporation. In the past two decades, the brewery has gained a following for such trademarks as Tokyo Black porter, Yona Yona pale ale, Sun Sun organic blond ale, and Indo no Aooni India pale ale. Like many American craft brewers, Yo-Ho has adopted the aluminum can as the package of choice, particularly for its eco-friendly and distribution-friendly (i.e., lightweight) characteristics.
South Korea
The country in the northern half of the Korean peninsula usually gets most of the international press, thanks to the antics of its totalitarian ruler. And it often overshadows some of the truly amazing things happening in South Korea. One of those is a burgeoning craft beer scene. The U.-based Brewers Association has had its eye on the country for some time. It’s one of the fastest growing export markets for American craft, growing faster than nearby Japan (though, to be fair, Japan’s market is much more mature and has a lot more of its own stuff to consume). In 2015, South Korea usurped Japan as the number five export market in the world for American craft beer. Though, for some perspective, it’s still incredibly small. In revenue terms, US craft brewers collectively sold about $3.4 million worth of beer in South Korea (of a total $99.7 million in worldwide export revenue).
In the grand scheme of things, beer is relatively new to Korea. Its first brewery opened as recently as 1908. (Contrast that with the first commercial breweries in Europe and it seems like five minutes ago.) Today, it’s pretty much a duopoly between Hite-Jinro (which also produces the top-selling brand of soju, South Korea’s national spirit) and Oriental Breweries (OB). OB is probably familiar to anyone who’s ever dined in a Korean restaurant in the States. It’s ubiquitous.
It was under the long shadow of those two mega macros that South Korea’s homegrown craft brewing industry emerged. The concept got a boost in the spring of 2014 when the country finally loosened brewing restrictions that made it nearly impossible for a small brewery to survive. (The macros are usually eager to protect the status quo; since they’ve got the deepest pockets, they can hire the best lawyers and the best lobbyists.)
The regulations were pretty ridiculous, and it’s astonishing that the government was able to enact and enforce them with a straight face. South Korea had mandated, until 2011, that only brewers that could produce a million liters of beer a year could obtain licenses to make the stuff. That converts to a little more than 8,500 barrels, which is the annual production of a modest-size brewery in the United States. It’s not a difficult level to achieve in a few years of operation, but it’s an insurmountable task in most breweries’ inaugural year. Most start-ups can’t secure the kind of capital to have the capacity from day one to make that a reality, and that’s before a drop of it has even been sold. In 2011, that threshold dropped to a more manageable 150,000 liters (just shy of 1,300 barrels). It gave new businesses a fighting chance, but it still excluded brewpubs. Most new brewpubs are lucky to produce a third of that in their early days. Finally, more rational heads prevailed and, in April 2014, the country lowered the minimum to 50,000 liters. Finally, cultivating a bona fide “scene” was no longer an impossibility.
It’s going to take some time to see how things play out in the country. Imports still account for a significant portion of the meager 1 percent share craft commands of the overall South Korean beer business. But things are picking up. Seoul has its own semi-major beer event, the Great Korean Beer Festival, which is converting new drinkers to craft—not an easy task when recent laws and regulations were creating such an inhospitable environment for the concept to succeed. And start-ups have been generating sizeable buzz. Among those:
Magpie
Magpie hits most of the crowd-pleasing styles—pale ale, amber ale, and porter—that are typical in a country just getting its feet wet in the craft brewery scene. But it’s also dabbling in more palate-challenging areas. For example, it produces a gose called Ghost (so whether you order it by name or style, there will be no mistakes).
Devil’s Door
A popular spot in the posh Gangnam neighborhood—immortalized in that infectious song by K-Pop icon Psy—Devil’s Door had the good fortune of deep pockets to get up and running. It’s owned by Shinsegae, the leading department store franchise in the country. The ultra-high-ceilinged brewpub is as sprawling as the parent company’s retail behemoths, but that doesn’t make it easy to get a seat. There’s almost always a thirty to forty-five minute wait to get in and try its products. Internationally accessible styles like IPA, stout, and standard American-inspired pale ale are usually what’s on offer. The food’s just as approachable. It’s the typical international gastropub fare: pizzas, mussels, gourmet burgers, and some more Asian-inspired dishes like fried octopus.
Southeast Asia
Vietnam
Japan and Korea are not the only parts of Asia to get their craft on. Would you believe that Vietnam has a nascent scene of its own? (The operative word being nascent. Don’t expect a beer geek’s paradise quite yet.) There’s been a massive learning curve for the country that’s only been open to outside economic influences (post-Vietnam War) since the Clinton Administration. The preferred method of consumption in urban centers like Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi is pouring beer over ice (refrigeration hasn’t always been a given there, and it remains at a premium). The country has a couple of dominant national and regional brands, namely the ubiquitous 333 and Bia Saigon, but the normalization of relations with the West ultimately has opened the door for a local craft renaissance. European proprietorship is readily apparent in Ho Chi Minh City’s brewpubs. For instance, there’s Gammer, which concentrates on Czech styles. Bar staff even don traditional Bohemian-style garb. The selection is limited to one light and one dark lager, but both hold their own against their Central European inspirations. The copper-colored brewing equipment is proudly front and center in the beer hall, composing a key element of Gammer’s décor.
Across town, the selection at the German-inspired Big Man Beer is equally limited, but both the pale and dark are worth a sip. The ambience is a bit more no-frills, but the quality of the beer elevates the experience. It’s not uncommon to witness locals dropping a couple of frozen cubes in their glasses, even though the temperature of the beer is just fine. Old habits die hard.
Singapore
Singapore’s a bit of an odd duck—as both a country/city (it’s both!) and as a drinking destination.
The squeaky clean melting pot of Asian cultures—don’t even think about spitting on the sidewalk; the US State Department will not bail you out for such tomfoolery—has some of the best food you’re ever going to find in the world. The hawker centers are like food courts of awesomeness, with expertly crafted dishes inspired by cuisines from all over the continent. The food is dirt cheap, too, and taxis are quite reasonable for such a wealthy nation. A fairly lengthy ride likely will run you the equivalent of 10 to 20 US dollars.
But you know what traditionally hasn’t been so cheap? Drinking. That’s in thanks to exorbitant customs duties on alcohol. (Pro Tip: If you’re visiting Singapore and staying in a hotel, the minibar is not your friend!) The average beer would cost around US$8 or $9, and if you’re easily lured into tourist traps like the rooftop lounge at the Marina Bay Sands (the hotel that resembles a humongous surfboard resting on top of a trio of towers), you’ll more likely spend closer to $15 or $16 for that same brew. A “cheap” cocktail is around $20.
The development of a craft beer scene had a couple of headwinds working against it. For one thing, that US$8 or $9 usually covered the local mass-marketed brand, Tiger. If you want a craft beer—say, something imported from Japan, the States, or Europe—you’re likely to throw down $12 or $13 for it (not unlike one would in Scandinavia, but we’ll get to that a bit later).
And then of course, there’s the climate. Singapore is less than one hundred miles north of the equator and is, therefore, without discernible seasons. Temperatures above ninety degrees Fahrenheit, with about 85 percent humidity, are as common in January as they are in July. While there are plenty of craft styles perfect for such oppressively sultry days, dark, big, and boozy brews aren’t likely to fare so well with the locals.
But despite all that, just as nature found a way in “Jurassic Park,” craft beer found a way—albeit a bit more slowly than most—in Singapore.
Brewerkz
In 1997, American business partners Devin Otto Kimble and Daniel Flores tried their luck at bringing US-style artisanal beer to the tropical island city-state. They opened Brewerkz, a brewpub serving some of the usual bar fare paired with some of the more approachable beer styles likely to turn off neither the local population nor tourists and traveling business people. There’s a little something for everyone in the lineup, which hits most of the beats you’d expect: Golden Ale, IPA, Pilsner, and Oatmeal Stout are a few of its perennials, along with Hopback Ale—what many would call a “session IPA”—and Iguana Lager, a light lager designed to hold up against the spicier dishes.
RedDot
RedDot’s origins trail Brewerkz’s by several years, but the brewpub likes to distinguish itself from the former by noting that it’s Singapore’s “first locally owned, independent commercial microbrewery.”
Like many brewers in far-flung regions of the world, RedDot founder and brewmaster Ernest Ng encountered his brewing inspiration abroad. However, it wasn’t the American craft beer scene or any old-world beer destinations like the United Kingdom, Belgium or Germany that sparked this inspiration. It was South Africa. Ng was on safari when he encountered a pair of South African soldiers, who offered Ng one of their cold beers. He was curious about the brand, but they told him it was no brand; it was home-brewed. That was Ng’s first exposure to the concept, and he was an instant convert. The name “RedDot” actually stems from the first time he set foot in a homebrew shop. Some ingredients packages were marked with a red dot, while others were blank. He just, quite randomly and with no real agenda, chose one with a red dot. (There’s almost a Matrix-like red-pill-or-blue-pill element to the origin story.)
After researching and pursuing practical education—including in the US—Ng opened RedDot. The brewery now has two locations serving food along with its beer, which includes quite a few refreshing styles—this is Singapore, after all—like a Czech Pilsner, a Kölsch-style brew, and a Summer Ale (which most probably would just call “ale,” since it’s always summer in Singapore). There’s also a nod to the tropical bounty of the island in the form of RedDot Lime Wheat. Though Ng and his team tend to color within the lines with a lot of the styles on offer, they don’t shy away from experimentation. RedDot’s Monster Green Lager pours in the hue that its name promises, but it doesn’t get that way from any silly St. Paddy’s Day-like food coloring. It’s actually infused with spirulina, the blue-green algae that’s packed with all sorts of healthful components like proteins, vitamins, and antioxidants. Who says beer can’t be good for you?
The Pump Room/Archipelago Brewing Company
Singapore’s also home to the Pump Room, a rather incongruous place to house a brewery. The establishment markets itself as a “Gastrobar”—sure, it’s a bar with plenty of decent food—but it has more of a nightclub vibe. In other words, it’s more of a scene to see and be seen. It’s also in the high-traffic entertainment district, Clarke Quay, which is a bit of a tourist magnet. The brewing operation is actually the result of a partnership between the club and Archipelago brewing, Singapore’s first commercial brewery, founded in 1931 by German brewer Becks (now a part of AB InBev, but that’s another story). Archipelago has a rather intriguing history, as far as twentieth-century beer making goes: When World War II broke out, the British—the colonial power in the island nation at that time—seized control of the brewery. This would not have been entirely unexpected, considering the fact that the brewery’s founders were German.
Malaysian Breweries then acquired Archipelago, eventually became a part of the larger concern, Asia Pacific Breweries, and ultimately became a wholly owned subsidiary of Heineken International.
In the mid-2000s, Archipelago got a makeover as Asia Pacific Breweries’ specialty arm under the guidance of American craft-brewing legend Fal Allen, who is best known for his work at California’s Anderson Valley Brewing Company.
Hospoda
Being the cultural melting pot that it is, Singapore is a perfect place for a brewery based entirely on Czech-style brewing. In 2013, Hospoda set up shop in the Bencoolen neighborhood, brewing exclusively in the tradition of the birthplace of pilsner (much like Ho Chi Minh City’s Gammer). As much as every beer enthusiast would love to transpose the ‘s’ and the ‘p’ and make it Hop-soda (what a concept!), the word “hospoda” actually means “pub” in Czech (and it was also the chosen moniker of a now-defunct New York City bar). The brewpub keeps things simple with a choice between a light lager (a pilsner) and a dark lager, and there are plenty of food options—from the expected sausages to the less obvious grilled whole duck—to pair with the brews.
LeVel 33
Remember the three towers with the gargantuan surfboard? A five or six-minute walk from there is an upscale brewpub that promises an elevated experience. It’s called LeVel 33 (for fairly obvious reasons), and it bills itself as the world’s highest urban craft brewery (it’s got a full eighteen stories on New York City’s Birreria). And people definitely pay for the privilege of drinking at such great heights that showcase a billion-dollar view of the glorious Marina Bay and the illuminated downtown cityscape. Inside, copper brew kettles are prominently displayed for the requisite ambient brewery porn. The house beers are of the European, now global, tradition: 33.1 Blond Lager, 33.15 India Pale Ale, 33.3 Stout, 33.4 House Porter, and 33.9 Wheat. Food options veer a bit toward fine dining—steaks, braised short ribs, lamb, and the like—but they might as well; would you really want a steep upcharge on a hotdog?
Scandinavia
Few European regions outside of Germany, the United Kingdom, and Belgium have developed such a hardcore beer culture as Scandinavia. The country that’s leading the charge among its fellow Nordics is Denmark, and, for the longest time, it was pretty much the only game in town.
Founded in 1847, Denmark’s Carlsberg brewery has grown to become the dominant player across Scandinavia—and much of other regions of Europe, for that matter. It stands as the fourth-largest brewing company in the world, behind only, in descending order, AB InBev, SABMiller, and Heineken. It was hard to imagine any sort of craft beer scene popping up in any Nordic city—much less in Carlsberg’s back yard of Copenhagen—but it has, and it’s thriving.
“Around 2002 and 2003 there were only about twenty brewers in Denmark,” reports Per Sten Nielsen, head of communications for the Danish Brewers Association, which represents about 98 percent of Denmark’s industry. “Now there are 120, and we consider that a revolution.”
For those who live in the United States, which has around 5,000 such operations, 120 may not sound like much. But when you take into account that the Danish population stands at just under 5.7 million—about 1/60th of the US tally—that number is pretty impressive. It’s more than twice the number of breweries per capita that the United States boasts.
Craft volume also commands about 6 percent of the country’s beer market, which, for a European country, is quite high. Revenue-wise, the percentage is considerably higher, at 16 percent share, thanks to the markedly higher price point on craft products.
For some comparison, the US market—the beacon for all things craft—had 6 percent craft share as recently as 2012. From that perspective, Denmark’s craft share is not very far behind that of the US.
As macro as Carlsberg may be, it’s one of the few global brewers that manages to dodge the “evil empire” label that many craft beer drinkers assign to the multinational mass producers. Sure, the Danish brewer’s flagship lager is designed for crowd-pleasing mainstream consumption, but that’s just what pays the bills. Carlsberg was the first of the world’s largest beer makers to embrace the rise of craft beer. In 2005 it launched the Jacobsen Brewhouse, a specialty label, named for Carlsberg founder J. C. Jacobsen, designed to appeal to craft enthusiasts. Jacobsen hits all of the major styles, including IPA, weissbier, dark lager, brown ale, blond ale, and seasonal Christmas bock.
While American macro producers aren’t allowed anywhere near the craft brewing trade association’s (the Brewers Association) Boulder, Colorado headquarters, the Danish Brewers Association’s board meetings actually include representatives from Carlsberg sitting alongside personnel from miniscule operations that employ two or three people. Carlsberg sees the value in collaborating with its craft brethren. Large American brewers mostly want to either buy them or bump them off the shelves or from the draft lines. The Danish relationship reflects a desire to combat the encroachment of wine and spirits into the beer space, a goal that the largest and smallest of brewers share. It’s heartening that the crafts and macros were able to find common ground and work together. It’s good PR for Carlsberg, too. They’re still a Goliath, but they’re perceived as a benevolent one that can sit down and have a couple of beers with all of the Davids.
Local Flavor
Initially, the Scandinavian movement was partly a revolt against traditional lager, much as it was in the United States and continues to be in other parts of the world. Most styles produced in Denmark and the other countries in the region reflect those popularized during the American craft surge, but some brewers are giving their products more of a sense of place. In many cases that means using indigenous botanicals that reflect the Scandinavian terroir.
The concept of the “Nordic kitchen” has been all the rage around the world ever since Copenhagen’s famous, Michelin-starred restaurant Noma opened in 2003. But foodies really started to pay attention when Restaurant magazine ranked it as the Best Restaurant in the World four times in five years between 2010 and 2014. If eating in the Danish capital wasn’t already expensive enough . . .
A less bankrupting way to get a taste of what Scandinavia has to offer would be through its beer, and brewers in the region are increasingly incorporating many components of Scandinavian cuisine into their brewed offerings.
Denmark
Mikkeller
One of the most famous of the Danish craft breweries on the world stage, without a doubt, is Mikkeller, which is interesting because for most of its existence it didn’t operate a physical brewery. Mikkeller, founded in 2006 by high school teacher Mikkel Borg Bjergsø and journalist Kristian Klarup Keller (who left the business a year later), created the concept of the “gypsy brewery.” The business model differs from that of a contract brewery in that the gypsy brewers don’t outsource all of their brewing and packaging activities to an outside brewery or two. The owners of the gypsy outfit set up shop in a partner brewery, brew their batches, and move on to another one (sometimes they stick around for a while).
The practice has become a viable option in the States, as well, with producers like Maryland-based Stillwater Artisanal Ales, created by Brian Strumke, and the now-defunct Pretty Things Beer & Ale Project, founded by Dann and Martha Paquette.
The gypsy concept also caught on a lot closer to home for Bjergsø. His estranged brother, Jeppe Jarnit-Bjergsø, launched the appropriately named Evil Twin Brewing, which has become a cult favorite in its own right.
The brothers have taken their sibling rivalry beyond their home turf and have been fighting an East Coast-West Coast turf war of sorts. Mikkel opened a Mikkeller gastropub in San Francisco, while Jeppe partnered with New York chef Daniel Burns to launch Tørst, which has become the toast of the already robust Brooklyn beer scene.
(Though Mikkeller’s nomadic founder spends a lot of time in the US these days, it’s hard to characterize the brewery as anything other than Danish).
Oddly enough, despite its worldwide acclaim, Mikkeller was a late entry into the Danish Brewers Association. That’s mainly because membership requirements are fairly stringent; a major prerequisite is operating a brewery. Mikkeller had been around for nearly a decade before it finally opened a brewpub in its home country.
Nørrebro Bryghus
When it comes to brewpubs, the Danes really know how to hit it out of the park. Nørrebro Bryghus, in Copenhagen’s Nørrebro neighborhood, has a roomy, loft-like space in an industrial-chic brick building that almost makes the requisite Scandinavian sticker shock worth it. The diverse beer list wears its international influences on its sleeve. There’s the dark golden New York Lager, modeled after pre-Prohibition Vienna-style lagers (not unlike a lager from a brewery named after a particular borough of New York City); the red ale Ravnsborg Rød, which has a distinctly Danish moniker, but its influences are largely British with some American overtones, thanks, mostly, to the Pacific Northwest Amarillo hop variety; Stuykman Hvede, which takes a cue from Belgian witbier; and Böhmer Pilsner, which, as one can easily surmise from its name, is a riff on a Bohemian (Czech)-style pilsner. Seasonally speaking, there’s no beating winter, as that’s the time to enjoy Nörrebros Julebryg (“Yule brew”). It’s a close cousin to traditional winter warmers and is brewed with a proprietary blend of Christmas spices.
All can be paired with a host of Nordic and continental specialties on the lunch and dinner menus. And visitors can purchase bottles of most of Nørrebro Bryghus’s regular beers. Though there’s plenty of active brewing happening on-site, most of the stuff for packaged distribution comes out of its larger production brewery about half an hour outside the city in Hedehusene.
Norway
Over in Norway, the brewery that’s made the biggest impact on the world scene has been Nøgne Ø (Norwegian for “Naked Isle”), founded in 2002 by Gunnar Wiig and Kjetil Jikun. Nøgne Ø’s portfolio runs the gamut of European styles, from Belgian-inspired creations such as wit, saison, and tripel, to interpretations of English-born classics like pale ale, IPA, and brown ale. Nøgne Ø has a full calendar of seasonals as well; it’s particularly busy during the holiday season with God Jul (Good Yule/Christmas), a dark ale, and Underlig Jul, a spiced ale whose name translates to “Peculiar Christmas.” The brewery offers a third Christmas brew called Julesnadder, which is a direct result of Norway’s strict alcohol laws—the most stringent of the Nordic region. In order for an alcohol beverage to be sold in supermarkets—where 98 percent of the country’s beer is sold—it must be no higher than 4.75 percent ABV. Anything stronger than that must be sold through government-owned liquor stores. Julesnadder clocks in at 4.5 ABV so it can reach a broader market through the mainstream grocery channel. (God Jul and Underlig Jul are 8.5 percent and 6.5 percent ABV, respectively, and can’t be sold in grocery stores.)
Sweden
Carlsberg has been spreading the craft love to other parts of Scandinavia, and that includes Sweden. Its most significant contribution to the furtherance of craft brewing occurred in 2014 when the doors of Nya Carnegiebryggeriet (New Carnegie Brewery) opened in the Hammerby neighborhood of Stockholm, Sweden. The brewery represented Brooklyn Brewery’s first international operation—a partnership with none other than Carlsberg.
Nya Carnegie beers include Nya Carnegie Kellerbier, Nya Carnegie Amber, a session IPA known as J.A.C.K., Lumens in Tenebris Dark Saison, and Primus Lux Winter Warmer.
The collaboration proved to be just the beginning of a beautiful partnership; barely a year later, Brooklyn and Carlsberg announced a second venture, this time at the E. C. Dahls Brewery in Trondheim, Norway. Dahls was a classic Trondheim brewery founded in 1856, and the Brooklyn-Carlsberg partnership is keeping it alive by updating it for the twenty-first century. In addition to the flagship lager, which has been a local favorite for generations, Brooklyn brewmaster Garrett Oliver oversees a range of craft brews for evolving palates.
Nynashämns Angbryggeri
One of the early adopters of the Swedish craft craze was Nynashämns Angbryggeri, whose doors opened in 1996, just as American craft brewing’s first wave was peaking. Its best-selling ale is Bedarö Bitter, an English-style bitter with an international pedigree of influences from the citrusy, piney, Pacific Northwest-born Chinook and Cascade hops to the pale ale, crystal, and wheat malts from English maltsters. It also happens to be the first beer the brewery based in seaside Nynashämn—about an hour’s drive from the capital city—ever brewed. A bit on the maltier side is Nynashämns Angbryggeri’s Brännskar Brown Ale, an American-style brown that includes chocolate and caramel and a mix of English and American hops.
Omnipollo
Founders Henok Fentie and Karl Grandin took a page out of the book that the founders of Denmark’s Mikkeller wrote, embracing the itinerant/gypsy model that left them free to move about the world and work their magic in some of the globe’s most renowned brewhouses. Their journey began in 2011, and they have left their indelible mark with products such as the pale ale Mazarin, which the team brewed at Belgium’s De Proefbrouwerij. The brewers’ residency at De Proefbrouwerij also resulted in Gone, its IPA with American Simcoe and Citra hops. Omnipollo produced it to celebrate the company’s third anniversary. The label art features an American one-dollar bill. Fentie and Grandin journeyed to Spain’s Cervesera del Montseny to concoct En El Bosque, a mind-blowingly complex mixture of specialty malts, rye, moscovado sugar, a variety of hops, and a bit of Spanish cranberries. They’ve ventured well beyond Europe as well; Omnipollo’s oat-and-wheat-based imperial IPA Fatamorgana, for instance, was born at Maryland’s Pub Dog Brewing.
Iceland
It’s easy for most non-Europeans to forget that Iceland is among the Nordic countries, as it is so far removed geographically from the Scandinavian peninsula. (It’s a good nine hundred miles from its closest Nordic neighbor, Norway.) And until the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century, the otherwise gorgeous, volcanic, and sparsely populated island was really beginning to look like the Land that Beer Forgot. It had its national macro lagers, of course, although for a country of a little over 300,000 people, how “macro” is macro? More people visit Iceland each year than actually live there full time. Viking and Egils were the most recognizable brands; locals and visitors were always sure to find those on draft or in bottles and cans at most corner bars in Reykjavik.
To be fair, we Americans can whine about Prohibition all we want, but most of us weren’t even alive for it. In Iceland, however, it wasn’t legal to brew conventional beer until 1989. The country fell victim to a temperance movement, not unlike the one that precipitated America’s own Eighteenth Amendment, during the same late-nineteenth/early twentieth century time period that such campaigns were active in the United States. (It had the same moral underpinnings as the stateside Prohibitionist movement, but there was a political aspect to it as well; the movement to achieve independence from Denmark was picking up steam at this point, and the Icelandic population associated beer with the Danes.)
Icelandic voters approved, through referendum, a complete ban on alcohol, which went into effect in 1915. The public mood changed a bit, and Iceland lifted the ban in 1933 (the same year Prohibition ended in the United States, by the way), but it was hardly a full repeal. Beer could not exceed 2.25 percent ABV (kombucha usually has more alcohol!) for the next fifty-six years.
So, it’s understandable why Iceland was a little late to the craft party; and the island nation has more than made up for it in such a short amount of time.
An early entry was Olvisholt Brugghus, based on an old dairy farm in the southern part of the country. Two farmers working the land in the area teamed up in 2007 to open the brewery. Skjálfti, which means “earthquake” in Icelandic, was the first exposure many Icelanders had to craft beer. The robust golden lager was closer in flavor to traditional Vienna lagers than the continental pilsners to which most were accustomed. It serves as a nice bridge beer into craft, and it came at a time when the country itself was just crossing that bridge.
The name refers to the fact that the farm brewery sits atop the point where the tectonic plates of the European and North American continents converge. A fairly destructive skjálfti hit in 2000, damaging the farm. The future brewers, a little more than a half-dozen years later, made lemonade (well, beer).
Nature’s mighty power also inspired Olvisholt’s imperial stout, Lava. The active volcano Hekla is visible from the brewhouse. The sweet, pitch-black beer is 9.4 percent ABV and was originally brewed to be sold in the Swedish market, but the brewery brought it home as Icelanders developed a taste for bigger beers. (Iceland relies a great deal on export revenue, as its home market is so small.) The line also now includes the balanced Móri red ale, with citrusy hop notes (thanks to the Cascade varietal) and a solid foundation of six types of barley malt and some wheat malt. Finally, there’s Freyja, a Belgian-style witbier.
“Einstöck” means “distinctive” in Icelandic, and Einstöck Ölgerd (“ölgerd” being the word for “brewery”) earns its name. Marketing-wise, the brewers like to use the hook that the production site is a mere sixty miles south of the Arctic Circle. And why shouldn’t they? The water doesn’t get much purer than it does there. The water from rain and prehistoric glaciers flows down a mountain and gets filtered through lava fields. But good beer is not just about what you’ve got, but what you’re able to do with it. And Einstöck offers some solid Nordic interpretations of world styles, such as Icelandic Toasted Porter, a rich, robust affair with notes of toffee and dark chocolate and a hue that’s as dark as the winter months that far north (it helps that the brew provides a fairly warming sensation). Its true winter seasonal, though, is Icelandic Doppelbock, which is malty, chocolaty, and bursting with flavor. At the time of year when the sun barely sets, Einstöck offers its seasonal Arctic Berry Ale, a witbier with indigenous bilberries picked near the Arctic Circle.
Iceland may historically have had a complicated relationship with Denmark, but those icy relations have thawed for the most part. Danish brewing’s favorite son, Mikkel Borg Bjergsø, brought his Mikkeller empire to the island, opening another pub in his rapidly growing international portfolio.
Finland
Finland doesn’t immediately come to mind in the context of great beer cultures, but the Finnish have more than a millennium’s worth of brewing heritage that puts many other countries’ brewing histories to shame.
That history wasn’t lost on Dogfish Head founder Sam Calagione, who’s made it his mission to resurrect ancient, long-dead styles of beer and pre-beer. In 2008, the Delaware brewery first produced Sahtea, a modern twist on the similarly spelled Sahti, a traditional Finnish beer rooted in the ninth century. Given its pre-hops lineage, brewers relied on a veritable potpourri of spices and herbs to give it a pleasing flavor. Cloves, ginger, cinnamon, and other flora were not off-limits, though juniper berries are usually the stars of the show (as they are in gin, by the way). But perhaps more noteworthy than its ingredients was its production method. The brewers used white-hot river rocks to caramelize the wort. Not one to cut corners, especially where tradition is concerned, Dogfish Head replicated that process when it first produced Sahtea. So distinct is Sahti that it enjoys protected status in Europe.
As for craft beer, Finland had a few hurdles to cross before it developed its own scene. For one thing, brewpubs weren’t legal (not an uncommon tale). Many of today’s most renowned American brewers had to get their states’ laws changed before they could open their own brewpubs. Dogfish Head comes to mind. Sam Calagione had to lobby the Delaware state government to legalize such a business before he could open his pub in the seaside town of Rehoboth. And that was in 1995, the same year, coincidentally, that the Finnish government made it legal.
But that doesn’t mean the floodgates opened for craft beer. The country, like the other Nordic nations save for Denmark, still has an uneasy relationship with alcohol. Similar to the situation in Norway, brewers may only sell beer stronger than 4.7 percent ABV in state-owned stores. In order to get their products in grocery stores, most brewers reluctantly play ball and keep their ABVs low.
To add insult to injury, the government has placed smothering restrictions on alcohol marketing. In 2015 Finland enacted sweeping regulations that banned any sort of alcohol advertising involving contests or giveaways. On top of that, the government no longer allowed beer marketers to talk about their products via social media, which has been the bread and butter for craft brewers worldwide. Many have argued that American craft brewing would not be growing nearly as quickly as it has without social media.
Some have found the environment so constricting that they produce primarily for export or they move their operations beyond the Finnish borders entirely. Sori Brewing is one such brewery. The founders Pyry Hurula and Heikki Uotila turned to crowdfunding for their start-up capital. Realizing that they never would grow as quickly as they needed to in order to become a profitable, self-sustaining operation, they decided to move their brewery to Estonia while maintaining their Finnish identity.
Sori does produce a couple of beers below that 4.7 percent ceiling—Out of Office Session IPA and Garden Wit—but the majority of the brewery’s efforts are focused on pushing the boundaries of brewing. Sisu, for instance, is an 8 percent ABV double IPA, hopped to the stratosphere with five American varietals. Sisu, incidentally, is a Finnish term for “stoic determination, bravery, resilience, perseverance, and hardiness”—kind of what it takes to get to the bottom of such a big, hoppy brew.
South America
South America, like many other regions of the world, is a tough nut to crack as a beer market. The macro brands have the region in a colossal stranglehold. Each of the major countries on the continent has its own dominant brand to which the locals are extremely loyal. But most of those brands are owned by a single multinational brewing conglomerate. As tied as they may be to their respective homelands, there’s still a gargantuan corporate parent that’s pulling the strings.
Take Argentina, for instance. The dominant brand in the market is Quilmes, which was founded in 1888 and eventually, as the global market consolidated, became a part of the portfolio of Brazil’s AmBev. AmBev and Belgium’s Interbrew merged in 2004 to form InBev, the same company that would go on to acquire Anheuser-Busch four years later to form AB InBev.
Despite a market that favors Goliaths, Davids have been able to emerge across Argentina and other parts of the continent.
Argentina
When anyone thinks of Argentina’s great culinary contributions, the first two things to come to mind are steak and wine. Actually, those are usually the only two things to come to mind (okay, on the food side, maybe empanadas, as well). The country’s reputation for fine wine is well earned. Malbec is the big varietal coming out of Mendoza—Argentina’s Napa—but the region is no slouch when it comes to producing secondary wines like Tempranillo and Cabernet Sauvignon. Rarely, however, does anyone outside of South America think of Argentina as a hotbed of fine beer activity. As unlikely as that may seem, it’s not half as unlikely as the part of the country responsible for an outsized chunk of its artisanal brewing. No, it’s not cosmopolitan Buenos Aires—though there’s plenty of great beer to be found there—but areas in and around Patagonia, the mountainous, snowy, and glacial area near the bottom of the world. It’s actually quite logical considering how pure the water is there. There’s already a substantial cottage industry of companies bottling its glacier water and just selling that.
Cerveza Beagle
We most likely didn’t learn the name Ushuaia in our high school geography classes, but adventurous globetrotters who’ve stepped foot on Antarctica have more than likely passed through the Patagonian city in Tierra del Fuego at Argentina’s southern tip (home to the seaport that’s the most direct link to the world’s southernmost and most barren continent). Ushuaia is home to Cerveza Beagle, named after the Beagle Channel, which is adjacent to the town. The channel itself was named for Charles Darwin’s ship, the HMS Beagle, which spent quite a bit of time on those southern waters doing all kinds of sciency stuff. Cerveza Beagle features such maritime imagery on the labels of beers like Fuegian Red Ale (aka Rojo), Fuegian Cream Stout, and Fuegian Golden Ale (aka Rubia, Spanish for “blonde”). Incidentally, “Fuegian” refers to the inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego.
Cerveceria Blest
The city of Bariloche, in a more northerly region of Patagonia, has a booming artisanal beer scene. The best known among the breweries is Blest, which has operated a brewpub in Bariloche since 1997 and now hits all of the major stylistic notes with offerings such as Blest Bock, Blest Frambuesa (a raspberry-enhanced fruit beer), Blest Scotch Ale, La Cream Stout Blest, and Blest Pilsen (a pilsener). The brewery fully capitalizes on its locale, enticing visitors with its jaw-dropping vistas of the snow-capped Andes.
Chile
Let’s not forget that Argentina doesn’t have a claim on all of Patagonia; Chile also gets a piece of the region, as well. And, Chile’s beer scene definitely gives the rest of South America a run for its money. The latest estimates put the number of Chilean craft breweries at somewhere between 150 and 200. (Some put the number at around 400, but most are so small that they barely register.) That’s not a bad number for a country with a population of around 18 million. That’s nearly the same number of breweries per capita as the United States.
In Chile, there isn’t a trade association specific to craft brewers like there is in a lot of other countries, but a handful of the small players have been joining ACECHI (whose formal name is Asociacion de Productures de Cerveza de Chile), the trade association that used to represent only the large players. The craft producers saw the advantage in aligning with ACECHI as a means of getting laws updated to reflect the country’s new brewing landscape, as well as to organize events to promote their industry.
The one thing about the country’s small brewers is that they are truly small.
“In the US there tends to be confusion related to the larger breweries (some huge) that are still considered ‘craft,’ [while] in Chile we have a lot of homebrewers who have set up a ‘brewery’ as a small family business—they end up getting licensed, so I guess technically they are breweries,” reveals Kevin Szot, founder of the Chilean brewery that bears his name. “But size-wise, many are smaller than many American homebrewers.”
Homebrewers who go pro—even if only barely—and get licensed to sell beer are typically called nanobreweries. But many of these small family start-ups are more nano than nano.
Breweries of some scale that might fit the always debatable definition of “craft” that are driving the Chilean scene have been subsidiaries of large international breweries and wine makers (famous Chilean Concha y Toro winery bought a stake in the up-and-coming Kross brewery in 2011, for instance).
Still, the entrepreneurial producers have been making a name for themselves. And while Szot likes to say that it’s still “1980” in Chile in terms of craft beer development, American breweries at that time were getting zero attention outside of their immediate areas. The world is already starting to notice some of the better brews Chile has to offer. Here are some of the breweries on the global radar.
Szot
The eponymous brewery of founder Kevin Szot—an expat from California who married a Chilean—has bottles that are as much fun to look at as what’s inside them is to drink. Lining up its bottles next to one another on a bar is like setting up a mini art gallery. The label designs feature cartoonish illustrations of one-eyed red and yellow monsters (Negra Szot Stout), a horned individual in a tiny top hat and tie holding a mug of beer (Amber Ale), and a big-eyed human face that evokes a German expressionist painting (Barley Wine).
Cerveceria Mahina Rapa Nui
There’s remote and then there’s Easter Island remote. That’s right, the island with the big stone faces—officially a part of Chile, though 2,300 miles of ocean separates it from the mainland—has its own brewery. Cerveceria Mahina Rapa Nui keeps things simple, both light and dark. Its limited offerings include Mahina Pale Ale, which adheres pretty closely to the English originals. Mahina Export Stout is the creamy, roasty counterpoint to the pale. Mahina’s brews have taken on white whale status among some intrepid travelers, primarily because of its exotic, hard-to-reach birthplace. But provenance is only part of their appeal; they’re good beers in their own right.
Cervecera Del Puerto
Seafaring iconography (pirates and such) dominates the trade dress of Cervecera Del Puerto, founded in 2003 in Valparaiso—a city that’s enjoying a brewing boom unto itself. The label imagery reflects the history of the Pacific coastal city. Local stories tell of the very frequent attacks from maritime marauders, and the product names themselves celebrate those villainous characters. There’s Barba Roja (Spanish for “Red Beard”), a reddish amber ale, and Barba Negra (“Black Beard”), a porter. (There’s also Barba Negra Extra Fuerte [“Extra Strong”], which falls into the “robust porter” category.) There’s no face on its Rubia (“Blond”), but the yellow label features a faint image of a seventeenth-century ship caught in some pretty rough waters.
Brazil
When the Brewers Association publishes the annual stats from its Export Development Program (EDP), Brazil is a perennial growth driver, frequently outstripping the growth rate for craft beer exports worldwide.
There’s a good reason for that. Not only is Brazil a mega market for beer—it’s the birthplace of AmBev, which became the dominant component of InBev and, later, AB InBev. But, like most beer-soaked countries, consumer tastes evolved, and they craved something more despite the best efforts of the dominant macros to make the beverage a commodity.
And, it’s also a sign of the artisanal sector’s maturity and staying power when the multinationals start taking an interest in its key players. On two separate occasions six months apart in 2015, AB InBev—under its local AmBev banner—acquired Brazilian craft brewers Cervejaria Colorado and Cervejaria Wäls.
Colorado was among the first movers in the local scene, setting up shop in 1995. And, while it’s common for international craft brewers to emulate the North American brewers credited with starting the movement, Colorado went out of its way to make the concept its own and infuse its products with a distinct Brazilian-ness. Colorado does make a pilsner, for example, but Cauim, its interpretation of the world’s most popular style, includes cassava (aka mandioca) in its recipe. The brewery’s Appia is a traditional wheat beer with a not-so-traditional ingredient: Brazilian orange honey, or, as it’s known locally, Mel de Laranjeira. Colorado brews its porter with Brazilian-grown coffee. Then there’s Vixnu, a double IPA brewed with traditional Brazilian candy sugar.
Cervejaria Wäls, based in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, launched four years after Colorado and was equally intent on giving its brews local flavor. Aging in oak chips infused with Brazil’s native spirit, cachaça (distilled from the juice of sugar cane), gives the brewery’s Belô Ipê some earthy aromatics not traditionally found in the style. Belô Ipê impressed the judges of the 2014 World Beer Cup enough to earn it a silver medal. However, it was Belô São Francisco, Wäls’s take on the Belgian dubbel style, that really wowed the judging panel; they gave it a gold that same year. São Francisco’s little bit of Braziliana comes in the form of local raisins.
The innovations of Cervejarias Colorado and Wäls likely will benefit from enhanced visibility and broader distribution thanks to their acquisition by such a global giant. And they won’t be the last, especially when you consider some of the other world class breweries operating in Brazil.
Cervejaria Bodebrown
Founded in 2009, Cervejaria Bodebrown is more than just a brewery garnering international acclaim; it also happens to be a brewing school—the first of its kind in its home country. Renowned industry pros teach courses on beer production, as well as tasting and food pairing. Among its award-winning offerings is Perigosa (literally “Dangerous,” and for good reason), an überhoppy double IPA that’s a bold 9.2 percent ABV. Bodebrown also attracted a fan from Escondido, California; in 2013 it collaborated with Stone Brewing Company on another creation within the India pale ale family. Cacau, as its name suggests, has quite a local twist: it was brewed with Brazilian cacao nibs. It was the toast of IPA Day. (Yes, that’s a real international “holiday.”)
Cervejaria Jupiter
The brewery with the godly name has most of the stylistic bases covered—IPA, pale ale, porter, Vienna lager—but it’s particularly noteworthy for the limited releases that have quite the kick. Jupiter teamed up with De Cabron, a leading Brazilian hot sauce maker for Chipotle Porter. In addition to the usual dark chocolate notes common in porters, the use of smoked malt gives it the same smokiness for which the eponymous chili pepper is known. The Da Cabron partnership didn’t end there. The relationship also produced Habanero Dubbel. Few breweries think to infuse a Belgian-style dubbel with habanero peppers (or any kind of spicy peppers, for that matter), but the pairing really works.
Cervejaria Seasons
No need to translate too many of the beer names here. Much like the brewery’s moniker, Cervejaria Seasons prefers to use English words for its portfolio, which debuted in 2010, and those words make for some fairly offbeat labels. Green Cow is the name it chose for its IPA (partly because spent grain from the brewing process makes good cattle feed, and the cows return the favor by fertilizing the soil in which the hops and barley grow). The cow is the brewery’s mascot appearing in its logo and on its various labels. Another of its creations is Basilicow, a witbier brewed with fresh basil leaves.
Like Bodebrown, Seasons has done its fair share of collaborating with California breweries. It teamed with Green Flash Brewery on Holy Cow, a West Coast-style IPA. Despite the cartoonish bovine’s visual ubiquity, not all of Seasons’ beers have the word “cow” in their name. There’s Funhouse, a Belgian-style blond that was the first beer Seasons produced.
Cervejaria Landel
Landel is a Brazilian brewery that didn’t just take a cue from the American craft brewing revolution; it seems to have the pulse of its evolution as well. As session beers have been all the rage in some sectors of US craft brewing, Landel adapted that concept for its home market. Its lower-ABV offerings include American Session IPA (4 percent ABV!), which has the requisite citrusy US-born hops, and Session Tripel, a style that rarely gets a sessionable makeover (and when it does, it’s often called a Single, at least in the States). The drinker gets all of the spicy, fruity aromatics they’ve come to expect from a tripel but experiences a much lower, 5 percent ABV. Landel also brews a dry-hopped German Pils that amps up the bitterness on the global style.
Given the size of Brazil’s population—200 million plus—and Brazilians’ unquenchable thirst for beer, Brazil hosts a craft culture that commands attention of the entire world. It’s definitely one country to watch very closely.