They Ruined It!

[afromaiko]

Andrew, depending on when that was there may have either not been any craft beer scene to check (pre 1993) or it may not have been worth checking out (pre 1998). The scene was pretty crazy with a lot moe misses than hits until about ten years ago, then there was a thinning out of all the clueless operators. In the last five years we have seen the emergence of an upper echelon of maybe twenty breweries who make very well crafted interesting beers, below which there is an iceburg of places that churn out well-crafted-but-ho-hum-show-me-something-else pilsener, dunkle, and weizen (and/or perhaps a koelsch). There are also still a few dogs around, but fortunately most have passed away.

I heard the tax laws made it prohibitive to run small breweries there because they had to guarantee sale of a huge amount of units and then pay all the tax up front, even before the beer is brewed.

 

[Steve Lacey]

I heard the tax laws made it prohibitive to run small breweries there because they had to guarantee sale of a huge amount of units and then pay all the tax up front, even before the beer is brewed.

Yes. Pretty close. For regular beer you need to have a minimum production target of a very big number ... I can't remember off the top of my head. But a happoshu licence is less demanding and to qualify as happoshu all you have to do is add a small amount of non-barley/non-hop adjunct...wheat malt, even herbs and spices. So I think that most craft breweries technically produce happoshu. They still have to pay taxes in advance and this has caused the demise of more than one small brewery. Sorry I don't have the specific numbers at my fingertips.

 

[mje1980]

I had a malaysian carlsberg last night at the mother in laws. Very easy to drink, but fairly bland as well. Not a lot of body. SLightly better than tooheys new ( which isnt great ).

When on honeymoon in the maldives, we stayed at club med, which means all you can drink at lunch and dinner. I expected crap asian beer, but it was carlsberg, REAL carlsberg, malty, rich, and crisp. The restaurant workers there loved us because we were aussies, and actually treated them like people ( unlike the french and japanese there, who treated them almost like slaves ), so they would bring us beers and wine bottles for the whole 3 hour period. Ah memories

And the tiger beer in singapore wasn't too shabby either.