A brewing battle

New Zealand’s Leon Mickelson helps organize the Kerry Center Craft Beer Festival in Shanghai. [Photo provided to China Daily]

American Gary Schkade says: "Chinese don't want the old stuff anymore. They want what other people don't have.

"I work with Shanghainese guys, and 80 percent of them are getting a taste for craft beer. People like Boxing Cat introduced it piece by piece, but now you're getting main guys like Reberg introducing new innovations."

Reberg, a Shanghainese brand, brews its beers locally, packs them in stainless steel bottles and markets them to five-star hotels. As it observes the 16th-century Bavarian Purity Law, it can only contain barley, hops and water, arguably placing it on the more conservative edge of the craft beer spectrum.

Craft beer's influence in China is also pouring over provincial capitals like Sichuan's Chengdu, Hubei's Wuhan and Guangdong's Guangzhou, which have all hosted their own dedicated festivals.

The way Chinese are embracing the culture is itself novel, says Shanghai-based Gudrun Hellauer-Schwichtenberg, deputy general sales manager for BLN Restaurants and Caterings.

"They describe it online as a mixture between beer and food. They also have their own myths around our beer," she says. "They really analyze it, which I don't think people in the West would do."

Back at The Brew's temporary stall in Pudong, which claimed pride of place at the entrance to the beer festival, a middle-aged Chinese man ambled up and barked the word "poppy" several times. It was enough to get him a drink.

Sophie Cheng, a middle-aged woman from Hong Kong, says she enjoyed the IPA, but the pure wheat beer "wasn't as fresh as in Germany".

Generally, beer has been gaining popularity in China in recent years, while demand for wine and spirits has been losing steam.

Beer consumption grew by an average 30 percent a year from 2006 to 2011, according to London-based global market researcher Mintel. Its average price rose by about a quarter in roughly the same period.

Meanwhile, wine sales' growth slowed from 50 percent a year over the 2007-10 period to just 12 percent in 2011. Sales of spirits also saw growth ebb by 8 percentage points to 16 percent year-on-year in 2011.

However, there is still a huge gulf between rich-tasting craft beers that retail for anywhere between 30 to 60 yuan a glass and bottled Chinese beers like Snow or Tsingtao, which can be purchased for about 10 percent of the cost at most grocery stores.

Shandong native Brian Wang, a bartender at the Shangri-La Hotel in Shanghai, explains: "I don't like factory beer. It tastes like water. Craft beer is much better. I first got into Hoegarden, but now I like IPA, pilsner and wheat beers."

When asked for his thoughts on one of the craft beers at the festival, the 23-year-old smelled it before letting it soak into his palette.

"This has wheat in it, but I can't taste the peppercorn. Maybe I'm not very professional yet," he says. "But 30 yuan is a little expensive. We'd normally pay 10 yuan for a glass this size."

However, not all of China's expat brewers are convinced by craft beer's sales pitch.

"I would have a problem selling something I'm not satisfied with, but some of these craft brewers sell batches along the way as they experiment," says Rene Schwichtenberg, a brew master for Paulaner in Shanghai.

Paulaner is one of six breweries in Munich licensed to produce and sell Oktoberfest beer.

"You can't drink craft beer all night. It's not designed for that," Schwichtenberg explains.

"A good beer is one that you can drink all evening and not have a headache the next day. That's a good beer."