More changes are on the horizon. Taipei's Cultural Affairs Bureau is brewing plans of its own to turn the site into a recreational area with operational brewing facilities on a limited scale. The building that hides the facilities built in 1919 is to be razed and the original buildings refurbished.
The one thing that has not changed over the years, according to Tsao, is the recipe. Like its predecessor, Gaosha, Taiwan Beer is a lager and undergoes a cold-fermentation process that allows the yeast to settle and be removed, giving the finished product greater carbonation and a golden coloring rather than a hazy amber. Also like Gaosha, Taiwan Beer has penglai rice (蓬萊白米) added to it, along with the malt and hops. This, Tsao explains, is what gives Taiwan Beer its award-winning taste. It won the gold medal at the World Selection for Beer in Geneva in both 1978 and 1988 and earned a silver medal in the Brewing Industry International Awards in 2002.
The tour finishes in the back of the brewery grounds under a canopy of corrugated metal, where a matrix of machines, pipes and conveyor belts converge: a bottle washer that scrubs the labels and sanitizes thousands of bottles at a time, a beer filler and capper that produces 550 bottles of beer per minute, a pasteurizer that showers those bottles in hot water for an hour, and finally a labeler and caser that readies the bottles for store shelves.
In an office overlooking the whole operation, several brewers take their lunch breaks, enjoying bian dang and, not surprisingly, bottles of beer. Here, the tour ends as it began, with a toast: "To Taiwan Beer! The best beer in the world!" Tsao says.
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