One woman is on a mission to introduce Chinese palates to small-batch European beers. Culture Trip spoke to Jennytha Raj, co-founder of Drinking Buddies, about why China needs to get on board with craft beer.
Walk into a bar in any Chinese city and you’ll find a seemingly endless supply of Tsingtao and Snow Beer. But try to order a craft ale and you’ll be met with raised eyebrows and, if any are available, a hefty bill at the end of the night.
Drinking Buddies, which also goes by its Chinese name 啤友汇 (or Piyouhui), is a subscription-based tasting club and an independent distributor of top-quality craft beers. Fans of the drink based sign up to have six bottles delivered to their front door every month.
Deliveries are themed, and Drinking Buddies concentrates on finding rare and highly regarded brews from countries such as Korea, the UK and the US. Some of the beers are so new that their names don’t even have a Chinese translation.
Raj started the company after the Chinese president revealed a love of craft beer. Xi Jinping, General Secretary of the Communist Party, was photographed drinking a Greene King IPA with David Cameron in 2015 while on a visit to the UK. “It seemed like the perfect time to make my dream a reality,” Raj says. “China’s demand for IPAs shot up 1,600 percent after that, and I started to see a newfound appreciation for beers other than lager. That story had so much impact that lots of bar owners thought that craft beer was actually called IPA.”
The 28-year-old beer aficionado has lived between China and the UK throughout her life. It was while at university in Warwick, England, that she started to enjoy drinking beer. “I used to hate it,” she says. “It would make me feel bloated and disgusting, and was generally tasteless. I used to drink Corona so I add lime for flavour. But moving back to the UK, I discovered just how delicious beer could be.”
The 28-year-old beer aficionado has lived between China and the UK throughout her life. It was while at university in Warwick, England, that she started to enjoy drinking beer. “I used to hate it,” she says. “It would make me feel bloated and disgusting, and was generally tasteless. I used to drink Corona so I add lime for flavour. But moving back to the UK, I discovered just how delicious beer could be.”
This discovery pushed Raj to tap into the Chinese beer market. While sales of cheap lagers have been dropping, craft and premium beers are becoming increasingly desirable to younger, affluent consumers, and brands such as BrewDog, from Scotland, are becoming more widely known. Raj’s company is helping drive this change. “We’re teaching people through outreach and marketing that craft beer can be enjoyed like a fine wine,” she says.
Running a small company means Raj can pick and choose who she stocks. “We imported from a one-person brewery in Austria who was only able to give us a few cases of his stock – but it was worth it,” she says.
However, Raj does face some struggles operating a small-scale beer business, however: “The general assumption is that all foreign or imported beer is the same, placing our beer on a level with Budweiser or similar companies,” she says. “It’s a thing that people want to be seen drinking, so bars advertise it even if they don’t actually sell it.
“It’s naturally very frustrating, particularly when the comparison is against a commercial beer and you’re being out-priced by a corporate-owned craft brewery,” Raj continues. “So far we’ve focused on representing small, independent breweries, which tend to be more expensive. But that’s all part of educating the market here, and I believe strongly that it will change positively with time.”
Despite competition from commercial brands, Raj remains confident. “Craft beer is the next big thing in China,” she says. And she’s already ahead of the game.[…]
