106 Bottles (or drafts if you are lucky) of Beer on the Wall

If you are uninterested in beer then it might be best to save yourself 5 minutes and skip this post!
Having lived in Northern California for nearly 5 years, we have caught the beer bug and have been longing for cold drafts of west coast microbrew throughout the trip. Often we reminisce of the happy hours in San Francisco at Rogue Ale House, Vesuvio, Kennedy’s and of course, The Buccaneer.

Being beer enthusiasts we have made a point to sample the domestically produced beer in each country that we have visited in the hopes of learning not only what styles are preferred but also what role this wonderful drink plays abroad. Six months in we have visited 18 countries and sampled 106 domestically produced beers. The styles and tastes preferred have varied as well as the role that beer plays in each culture.

The world of beer styles is essentially split into two groups. ales and lagers. The essential difference is the yeast used in production, top fermenting vs bottom fermenting, and outside of that, both styles can offer a wide array of beers. Colleen and I are ale drinkers. Unless it is an early Saturday morning with Miller Lite during college football season (go Hawks!) or the conclusion of a long bike or run, we usually find ourselves sipping a cold pint or bottle of ale of some sort. Interestingly enough, the rest of the world heavily prefers the lager style of beer.
Availability of different labels has varied greatly from country to country. In Vietnam we have been treated to 18 different labels of beers while in Lesotho we were only able to track down one, the national lager called Mulati.

Over 70% of the beer we have sampled has been lager with the occasional surprise of an ale every now and then. If you like lagers such as Budweiser or Heineken, you would be in good company in most parts of the world. Most all the lagers we have sampled are fairly straight forward, light in color, lower in alcohol, and not much malt flavor or mouth feel outside of the presence of a slight alcohol taste. Most all contain adjuncts of some sort, usually rice or corn (or as they call it everywhere else, maize). Many add a fair amount of sugar prior to fermentation to boost alcohol levels (but impart no taste) and in Eastern Africa they even add unfermentable sugars to the mix resulting in a beer that can only be described as a Budweiser with a tablespoon of sugar added. There have been some great finds though, including the wonderful Laurentina Clara in Mozambique, the all natural Windhoek of Namibia, and the high alcohol Kingfisher Red of India. Rwanda, moving forward since the tragedies of the mid 1990s brought with it a tasteful Primus Lager served in traditional Belgian glassware, a reminder of it's colonial past.

Nearly all of the ales we have found have been in Ireland, the UK and South Africa. We were treated to unpasturized 'live ale' in London, a special treat that is hand drawn at traditional pubs. We also spent a fair amount of time with 750 ml bottles of Castle Milk Stout while camping in South Africa and we have also enjoyed half liters of dark ales recently in Vietnam.

I have found it very interesting the amount of mass produced large label beer available throughout the world. Carlsberg and Heineken are mainstays in most every country we have visited. We have actually had Carlsberg (Danish) that was produced domestically in Malawi as well as Amstel (Dutch) produced in Jordan and Lowenbrau (German) produced in Nepal.

We have been lucky enough to visit a total of 8 microbreweries so far getting a taste for small batch beer in each continent we have visited. Vietnam has been the surprise of the group boasting a microbrewery in a majority of all sizable towns we have visited. A stop for a beer at Legends microbrewery of Hanoi turned into and afternoon of discussion with the German Brewmaster. He introduced himself as I was seated at the bar staring at the brewing equipment and asked if I was Australian. I responded and clarified that I was American and asked him if he was Czec. It was a good way to break the ice and lead to an afternoon of beers he refused to let us pay for. Turns out his name was Werner and he was from Ramstein Germany and had been working in breweries since he was 13 (he was now in his mid 50s) eventually moving to Africa to brew and now to Vietnam. He was the owner and turned out to be very open to discussing his operation: he ships in a container of malt and hops from Germany every 3 months and brews 40 times per month on his 10 barrel system. He regularly sold 1500 liters of beer a day in his 400 person beer hall and distributed what was left over. I told him I thought he needed a larger brewing system to which he replied that the his Vietnamese investors would not approve it. So for now, he brews at least once a day, seven days a week.

Beer prices and packaging have also varied greatly from country to country. The most costly place we have drank was our first stop, Dublin, where we paid up to $6 USD for a pint of Kilkenny on draft. Africa brought with it low prices for beer (always by the bottle, never available by draft) where we bought 750 ml bottles of domestic beer for as little as $0.60 in Uganda. All in all, draft beer has only been found in about 1/4 of the places we have visited and the preference seems to be toward large bottles (deposit required in Africa) over cans.

The closest thing I have found to homebrew abroad has been the street beer of Vietnam, known as 'bia hoi'. Always served by draft out of a shabby looking keg placed curbside, bia hoi has been easy on the pocketbook as you can sit on the sidewalk in a plastic chair drinking low alcohol draft beer for around $0.25 a glass. There was also the homemade Tibetan beer offered in Nepal which consisted of a scoops of fermented millet grain placed in a large metal stein and topped off with steaming hot water. The bitter fruit wine like drink was then sipped through a metal straw and each stein refilled multiple times with hot water until all of the alcohol and flavor had been extracted from the fermented millet.

The role beer plays in each country has varied greatly. In the largely Muslim state of Jordan it is almost non existent outsite of the tourist areas. We did not see beer for sale or have a drink for nearly 2 weeks prior to trudging through a downpour to the other side of town for a cool draft of Amstel. In Africa, beer drinking was usually reserved for the men who began drinking in the early afternoon on roughly welded bar stools placed outside wood shacks roadside. In SE Asia, drinking is done at all times of day, and it is not uncommon to see businessmen having a drink by early afternoon. Unfortunately in many countries the drinking has become a curse of the poor and I wonder how a man with thread bare clothes and no shoes can be drinking beer after beer. Then I have to remind myself that the same thing occurs back home and unfortunately there is no help for these people. Beer, as always, accompanies celebration as well in most countries. Whether it was the completion of a long work week in Ireland, a Saturday night in Capetown, a wedding in India or locals on vacation in Vietnam, there was usually a person to be found enjoying a cold one.

Tonight we have our first sips of Beer Laos, the much famed national brew of the new country we have entered.