Country #33: Taiwan

Beer: Taiwan Beer Draft

Brewery: Taiwan Tobacco and Liquor Corporation, Taipei, Taiwan

ABV: 5.0%

Taiwan Beer Draft with actual Taiwan in the background. P.S., that is a regular pint glass. The bottle was about two feet tall.*

I recently returned from a trip to Taiwan. In addition to getting to see and experience a new country and culture for the first time, I also went to visit my insanely gregarious Taiwanese friend Ray, who showed me around his country, made sure I ate all the best food, and gave me a place to stay. In addition to good food, Ray is also a connoisseur of "lame jokes." One of his favorites:

Q: What kind of bee produces milk? A: A boobie.

So, when he told me several years ago that for a long time there was exactly one beer available in his country, called Taiwan Beer, I thought he was pulling my leg. Taiwan has a population similar to Australia (both about 23 million people). Imagine if Foster’s was the only beer in Australia and it was called Australia Beer. The commercials would have been surreal: “Australia Beer: Australian for Beer.” 

And no, "Taiwan Beer" is not some bastardized English translation. The characters on the label, and on this bottle cap, literally translate to "Taiwan" (the two characters on the left) "Beer" (or pijiu, the two characters on the right). Don't believe me: lookie here.

But he wasn't joking. Going into the 21^st century, Taiwan Beer was the only beer available in Taiwan. It was, and still is, brewed by something called the Taiwan Tobacco and Liquor Corporation (TTL), which was about as socialist as the name sounds. If you thought that the mainland Chinese were just a bunch of commies, you’d be surprised to learn that Taiwan, with its relative freedom, still leaned way to the left for many decades.

No longer in possession of a national monopoly on beer, Taiwan Beer is forced to compete with Busch, which goes remarkably well with whole grilled squid on a stick. It's not called Busch in Taiwan though, it's called Snowy Mountain Beer. Really.

Since 2002, when Taiwan joined the World Trade Organization, its beer selection has gotten a bit better, and in the last year or so highly regarded American craft beers from breweries like Rogue and Sierra Nevada have started to show up on Taiwanese shelves. But the Taiwanese keep drinking Taiwan Beer, which (in its various styles) enjoys about an 80% market share in the Republic of China. It’s not like they have to advertise the stuff—I didn’t see a single ad for it anywhere in the country. Hell, it’s named after the country! There is a professional basketball team named after the beer though, and they engage in titanic matchups like this one:

From the Taipei Times. Liquor before beer, in the clear! Also: yes, that is former Duke and Villanova jerk Taylor King, ball-hogging it for the last place team in Taiwan, where he is four feet taller than everyone.

Taiwan Beer is supposedly brewed with a special, local variety of rice, which gives it its “distinctive flavor,” but I think the Taiwanese are really just exercising local pride here, as the stuff is not bad, but also not particularly interesting. Besides, the Taiwanese get their fill of interesting flavors from a variety of things that aren’t beer, so I guess it’s not a big deal if the beer is kind of boring. 

From top left: 1) Home cooked meal courtesy of Ray's lovely mom, consisting of tender stewed beef, marinated boiled eggs, broad rice noodles, fried rice, and finger sandwiches with crispy fried tofu and crispy pork belly, followed by sweet rice cake for desert. Not pictured are the dumplings that got snuck onto the table after I took the picture. 2) Century egg, reeking pleasantly of ammonia, plus more beer. 3) Grilled and fried squid balls on a stick. 4) Duck noodle soup with all kinds of duck meat and duck organs. The stinky tofu (not pictured) was also, um, interesting.

In addition to the regular Taiwan Beer, there is also Taiwan Gold Medal Beer, which is a bit sweeter and somehow won an award that one time; Taiwan Beer Pineapple and Taiwan Beer Mango, which are even sweeter, obviously, and every bit as gross as you think they are; and Taiwan Beer Draft, which I recall being the best of the lot. I won’t lie to you: I don’t really remember exactly how it was different from the others, and I don’t understand what the “draft” implies, unless it means they’re actually pouring the stuff from a keg right into the bottle.  I just remember liking it more. 

*Not actually true.

Country #32: Dominican Republic

Beer: Presidente

Brewery: Cervecería Nacional Dominicana, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic

ABV: 5.0%

When a beer isn't very good, it is best served cold to mask its rank flavor. See: the marketing strategy of these guys.

Hispaniola is one of the few islands in the world that are divided between two or more countries. Ireland, Borneo, Tierra del Fuego, New Guinea, and Timor are the only other major examples, but there are a few more. Anyway, Hispaniola is divided almost evenly between two very, very different countries, Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Dominicans speak Spanish (spicy!), while Haitians speak French Creole (sacre bleu?). Dominicans excel at baseball, while Haitians excel at… well, not soccer, which is their favorite sport, but has seen them in only one World Cup, almost 40 years ago. The Dominican, while still a developing country, has long been stable politically and economically and is a booming tourist destination, while visitors to Haiti are typically sequestered in a cruise-ship-owned enclave, never to see the squalor of the rest of the country caused by the idiocy of the Duvaliers. The Dominican is still largely forested, while there are approximately three trees left in Haiti. 

While Haiti's natural resources have been terribly mismanaged for years (cutting down all their trees being the most visible problem), the Dominican government has been espousing good environmental policy for a long time. Next step for the DR: make a better beer.

And yet, despite its sad deficiencies relative to its next-door neighbor, Haiti makes the far superior beer. In addition to winning a medal at the World Beer Cop in 2000, it’s Crap National Lager, Prestige, wins the Best Beer on Hispaniola Award (presented by me) by a wide margin,because Presidente, from the Dominican Republic, tastes like complete and utter ass. There’s not really a more polite way of saying it.

Sometimes I like to translate the non-English words on beer packaging for my dear readers. I'll let y'all figure this one out for yourself, though.

In the past, when drinking pale lagers from tropical countries, I’ve remarked at how not bad they are (there have been exceptions, of course). Presidente is just bad. It has that skunky, corny flavor to it that can found in such fine concoctions as Natural Ice and Coors Light. The green bottle and its spot on the sunny shelf at the package store probably contributed to its skunkiness, so it might taste better in different circumstances, but the stuff I had was up to no good. While its name is surely intended to lend it an air of sophistication, this president is much closer to George W. Bush than Abraham Lincoln.

Danilo Medina, the actual presidente of the Dominican Republic. I have no idea if he's any good or not.

Despite its rank flavor, Presidente is available all over the New York Metro area, including in my hometown in Connecticut, because of the massive Dominican population there. I guess if you grow up drinking the stuff, you get nostalgic for it. Also, perhaps enough people with bad taste in beer have stopped off in Punta Cana while on a cruise and picked up a taste for it Regardless, it’s pretty easy to find in the Northeast. So be warned.

Country #31: Lithuania

Beer: Baltas White Ale

Brewery: Svyturys Brewery, Klaipeda, Lithuania

ABV: 5.0%

Tall, white, Lithuanian, and good: the Arvydas Sabonis of beers.

When I read about an American craft brewery, I’m often impressed to find that it was founded in the 1980s or, even more rarely, the 1970s. For example, the Boston Beer Company (Samuel Adams) was founded in 1984, and Sierra Nevada in 1980. The Svyturys Brewery, in Klaipeda, Lithuania was founded 1784, only 8 years after the Declaration of Independence was signed. Sure, lots of things in Europe are much older than their counterparts in America, but this is still pretty extraordinary. It’s by no means the oldest brewery in Europe—Stella Artois was first brewed in 1366 according to the bottle I had this weekend, even though drunken Brits might not give it the respect it deserves. But it’s still really, really old, and it’s been in almost continuous operation since then.

Baltas means "white" in Lithuanian, so Baltas White Ale means White White Ale, which is dumb (kvietinis alus means "wheat beer."). Also dumb: storing unfiltered, yeasty beer on its side for several months on the fridge. You can see the caked layer of yeast on the inside of the bottle, post-pour, at right.

This is particularly impressive given the history of conquests that have swept over what is now Lithuania. When the brewery was founded, its home city of Klaipeda, on the Baltic Coast, was part of the Kingdom of Prussia. Its strategic location as an ice-free port, however, meant that it was destined to change hands often. Germany unified with Prussia in the late 1800s, then lost it in World War I, after which it was controlled by the post-war Entente states (which pretty much meant Russia at the time). The Lithuanian people rose up in 1923 and created an independent Lithuanian state, but Hitler took it back less than 20 years later. Then the Nazis got kicked out, but not before the brewery was destroyed, and the USSR took over. The brewery was rebuilt in 1946, and then in 1990 Lithuania declared its independence again as the Soviet Union crumbled. Then, in 1998, somebody finally figured out how the hell to pronounce the brewery’s name*.

*I may have actually made that last one up. Svytruys just means "lighthouse" in Lithuanian. See? There it is on the fancypants bottle.

You don’t stay in business without making good beer, and Baltas White Ale is pretty tasty. It’s a white ale, similar to Hoegaarden, but a bit thicker and more flavorful than its most popular Belgian cousin. Both times I’ve had it I haven’t given it justice, however. The first time I had it I drank it out of the bottle, and it foamed up every time I tipped it to my lips. More recently, I had stored a bottle of the stuff in my fridge for quite a while, but it was too tall to store upright on my stupid fridge shelves, so a lot of the yeast caked itself to one side of the bottle. I still enjoyed it immensely, despite my idiocy.

Lithuania's other white export that's better than you'd expect it to be.

Country #30: Fiji

Beer: Vonu Pure Lager

Brewery: Vonu Beer Company, Nadi, Fiji

ABV: 4.8%

This beer is not made with this water, which is probably for the best.

As hard as it will be to find beer from Africa, it’ll be even harder to find beer from any of the countries comprising Oceania, the motley smattering of volcanic and coral islands dotting the Pacific Ocean. Some of these countries are just too small to produce a beer. Tuvalu, for instance, consists of nine coral islands and atolls, has a smaller land area than Bayonne, New Jersey, and is home to only 10,000 people. Instead of attracting honeymooners, Tuvalu makes money by selling web site domain names, since their country’s top-level internet domain is (by a stroke of luck!) .tv. Nearby Nauru, a single island barely bigger than Tuvalu, made its cash by selling bird shit for fertilizer, until they ran out of the stuff and had to start laundering money for the Russian mob before giving up the practice. Both places are about a thousand miles from anything, so even if they had the population and infrastructure to support a brewery, the cost of exporting the stuff (and importing the ingredients) would be astronomical.

Volcanic islands like Fiji (and also Tonga and Vanuatu) make beer. Coral islands, like Tuvalu (left) and Nauru (right: all of it!!) don't have the space or the resources. They're more concerned with staying above water.

Fiji, however, is unique among Pacific island nations. It’s bigger and more populous than the rest of ‘em. It has mountains, and therefore much more rain, so water—a fairly important ingredient in beer—is not at a premium (though drinkable water is unfortunately scarce). And it’s a bit closer to Australia than some of the smaller islands, so it attracts loads of tourists. So, making beer is not only possible, but it’s pretty much required. Aussies like to drink, and you might as well make money selling them beer.

It aggravates me to no end that the map I use to keep track of my progress doesn't show small island countries like Cape Verde and St. Lucia, which could easily be drawn on the map. Fiji is big enough to show up here, but most of the other countries in the Pacific literally are too small to draw at the scale of this map. Still, maddening.

So a few breweries are operating in Fiji. Fiji Bitter is the most popular beer in the country, but it isn’t exported to the United States. Vonu Pure Lager is though, at least as far as Hawaii, where my wife picked some up for me. Fittingly, Vonu is made in Nadi, Fiji’s most popular tourist center, which reduces the shipping costs to get the product to the sunburned bogans who want it. It’s a pretty standard pale lager, and considering it came from thousands of miles away in a country better known for coconuts than beer, I’d say it’s quite good, and certainly more flavorful than most cheap American beers. 

Vonu is the word for sea turtle in several Polynesian languages. And now you know.

Since it’s really just an ordinary beer, the only reason I found myself drinking Vonu was because of this blog. I can find a dozen and a half beers that taste just like it that aren’t shipped thousands of miles across the ocean. I make this same argument when encouraging people not to buy Fiji Water. You can get artesian water (which is what Fiji Water is) from a variety of sources in the United States, minus the consumption of fossil fuels. This is a slight moral dilemma for me: in bringing the world to my stomach (and liver), I’m supporting unnecessary carbon emissions, all in the name of a silly hobby. In this case at least, I can be pleased that the folks at Vonu are donating a good deal of money to sea turtle conservation efforts in Fiji (vonu is a word for sea turtle). Good for them, but maybe they can do something about getting potable water to poor Fijians, too.

State #24: Ohio

Beer: Christmas Ale

Brewery: Great Lakes Brewing Company, Cleveland, Ohio

ABV: 7.5%

Merry Christmas to me!

When you’re thirty, you’re finally old enough to ask for beer for Christmas without worrying that your family will think you have a problem. I wouldn’t have been comfortable doing it in my early twenties, especially since I was mostly drinking Keystone Light at the time. Thirty ‘Stones would have made for a rather unceremonious gift, and the sheer volume of beer involved would have been a bit too crass for Christmas.

Thanks to the dozens of places I saw this on the internet in the past month (and credit to these folks).

This year, however, I asked for beer, and beer I got. My wife got me a growler of the month club membership from ChuckAlek Independent Brewers, the brilliant new venture of my good friends Grant and Marta. I get a t-shirt, two growlers every month for a year, and a growler koozie, in addition to the prestige of being the very first member (Hey you! You should be the second!).

From Ramona, California, but by way of Ohio (and Poland). Try it!

Also, my sister and brother-in-law picked me up a six pack—a much less obscene volume!—of Christmas Ale from Cleveland's Great Lakes Brewing Company. For some reason I can’t find beer from Ohio in San Diego or in Connecticut, but they acquired some in New Jersey, and I’m grateful for their efforts. (Grant is also from Ohio, incidentally, but he makes his beer in California, so ChuckAlek’s stuff would not have counted).

When I think of the Great Lakes, I think of Michigan. And then Wisconsin. And then probably Ontario. And then New York. And I guess Ohio, too. (To be fair, the brewery IS only about a mile from Lake Erie).

Christmas Day in my family's house has turned into a lazy man’s dream (translation: my dream). We sit around petting the dogs, looking at the fireplace, watching my niece play with her toys, drinking dark beer, playing Scrabble, watching It’s a Wonderful Life, and eating Chinese food (I am a quarter Jewish after all, not too shabby). The Christmas Ale made a nice contribution to the afternoon. It was a bit spicy, with the usual winter ale spices, but also sweet, due to the inclusion of honey in the brew tank. I normally don’t enjoy sweet beers, but honey sweetness somehow is much more enjoyable to me than the malty sweetness of certain beers, like brown ales. Regardless, the high flavor content made for a nice early afternoon sipping beer, and made my Christmas (and my cheeks) merry and bright.

Now somebody just needs to buy me this for Hanukkah next year! (From here).

Country #29: Peru

Beer: Cusqueña

Brewery: Union de Cervecerias Peruanas Backus y Johnston, Lima (not Cusco), Peru

ABV: 5.0%

Still Life with Bottle, Glass, and Aji Peppers (J. Rossiter, 2012)

Cusqueña, one of the leading Crap National Lagers of Peru, originally hails from the Andean city of Cusco, the capital of the Inca Empire. The Incas, despite all their prowess in empire building, architecture, and potato cultivation, did not have a writing system. Instead, they communicated ideas with quipu, which were series of knotted cords used for counting. 

The Incas built this, but couldn't figure out writing.

Since they didn’t have a writing system, the conquistadores had to listen carefully to what the Incas were saying and write it down using whatever letters sounded about right (it’s called transliteration). At first, Cusco was spelled Qosqo, or sometimes Qusqu, and then later Cuzco and Cusco. Since the beer is simply named for the city, it could have been called Qosqoeña, or Qusqueña, or, if not for smallpox and horses, whatever the Incas themselves called someone or something from their resplendent capital. Who knows? Whatever the case, it would have sounded pretty exotic.

Pretty exotic nonetheless: an embossed bottle cap.

The Incas didn’t have a written language but, as I said, they were pretty nifty architects. They built Machu Picchu and all kinds of other ingenious structures, including a wall in Cusco featuring a single stone with twelve sides: la piedra de los doce ángulos. As far as individual masonry stones are concerned, it’s rather famous, and the folks at Backus and Johnston (least Peruvian names EVERRRR!) have engraved its image onto the Cusqueña bottle.

If you squint, you can see the "stone of 12 angles" in the bottle on the left. Don't bother counting: it has twelve sides (thanks, website!)

The Incas did not, however, have barley or hops. They did have a beer made from maize called chicha, which is still available in Peru today, but I’ll stick with the modern stuff. Cusqueña is exactly what you’d think it would be: a typical pale lager that goes splendidly, if cheaply, with the spicy food typical of Peruvian cuisine (like those bad-ass orange peppers in the picture up top). At least it doesn’t bait you with pretense, like Backus and Johnston’s other popular Crap National Lager, Cristal, which tastes nothing like the champagne (not that I’d know). 

Cristal champagne, from France: $200 a bottle. Cristal cerveza, from Peru: $1.16 a bottle.

State #23: Texas

Beer: Elissa IPA

Brewery: St. Arnold Brewing Company, Houston, TX

ABV: 6.6%

Not so big now, are ya Texas?

In my entry about Washington, DC, I made the case that our nation’s capital should be made a state. Admitting DC would give us 51 states, which would require a redesign of the stars in our flag’s canton. UNLESS! UNLESS we decide to get rid of some states. Texas wants out? I say let ‘em go! It already fancies itself as a country anyway—and it used to be one, for what it’s worth—so why not? (Other than the fact, in actuality, it can't secede). So, for now this entry will be titled “State #23” instead of “Country #29.” 

Eh, I guess we'll keep Texas. The map would look kinda funny without it.

Anyway, on to the beer: I recently tried a bottle of St. Arnold’s Elissa IPA, from Houston. The first thing I thought of when I cracked it open was “There was a Saint Arnold?” Seriously, when I think of Arnolds, I don’t think of the performing of miracles leading to beatification. I think of these guys:

Saints they ain't.

But it turns out that there was a Saint Arnold, and, appropriately, he is the patron saint of hop-picking and beer brewing. He lived in 11^th century Belgium, made beer in his abbey, and encouraged his followers to drink beer because drinking the water in 11^th century Belgium frequently resulted in one’s intestines becoming liquefied. Good job, Arnie!

There's Arnie, not to be confused with some chick named Elissa.

It was only a matter of time before some brewery honored Arnold’s exploits, and so the St. Arnold Brewing Company opened in Houston in 1994, in a building that formerly housed the Houston school district’s food services offices. Fortunately for the fine citizens of Houston, the brewery only took over the building, and didn’t take over the feeding of schoolchildren, though a nice stout would probably compliment sloppy joes and tater tots better than chocolate milk.

Any bottle cap that includes a map on it is okay in my book, and the shape of Texas is pretty iconic after all. It's not like a brewery from Wyoming would get much mileage out of putting an outline of Wyoming on a bottle cap.

The Elissa IPA (named for an old tall ship anchored in Galveston) wouldn't really do those sloppy joes justice, however. It wasn’t terrible, but it wasn’t particularly good either: it was bitter, but lacked the citrusy or piney flavors that make most American IPAs so tasty. It was also maybe a bit too malty for an IPA. It tasted more like a bitter amber ale, and if you had told me it was an amber, my expectations might have been more in line with what was actually in the bottle. My beer loving Houstonite friends have good things to say about St. Arnold however, so if you see one of their other offerings available, don’t be afraid to give it a try. I'm sure it at least beats scummy, dark-ages water.