Tapping into the beer market

Fancy a beer after work? The choice used to be pretty limited, with Taiwan Beer (台啤) accounting for as much as 99 percent of the market prior to 1987. All that has changed now and even the most down-at-heel convenience store offers a slew of fancy-looking imports.

With the deregulation of the alcoholic beverages market, beverage companies immediately began to open up local operations, and now are beginning to make their presence felt in the marketplace.

Now, three years after the manufacturer of Taiwan Beer lost its stranglehold on the production of alcoholic beverages in Taiwan, another change is set to rock the beer market -- the emergence of locally made microbrews.

According to Ministry of Finance statistics, since deregulation 353 companies have registered as producers of alcoholic beverages, as of last month. Eighteen of these are microbreweries.

While none of these companies will be taking down Taiwan Beer any time soon, they are performing the important function of diversifying the local beer market and also trying to create a new kind of beer culture.

Local production of alcoholic beverages has taken a significant hit from imports, which rose from 13.89 percent of the market in 2001 to 27.37 percent last year -- this despite the best efforts of the Taiwan Tobacco and liquor Corporation (TTLC) to give its products a more sexy image.

Local beer producers are sidestepping any confrontation with the considerable marketing muscle of TTLC and going the route of providing fresher, healthier or simply more diverse beers for people whose emphasis is on quality rather than quantity.

"We recognize that we are a niche market," Kevin Chou (周沛賢), the proprietor of Le ble d'or (金色三麥現釀啤酒) said, "but one with huge growth potential."

With an alcoholic-beverage market measuring over 6 million hectoliters a year, Chou is confident that there is room for his German-style beers in the Taiwan market.

"We are not newbies in this business," said Chou, whose family has operated a brewery in Thailand for the last seven years. It is this kind of experience that has allowed the company to get up and running within two years. "Even so, some of the early brews were, well, barely drinkable," he said.

"It has taken a lot of experimentation to get the right taste for Taiwan." Formerly selling their beers through a membership system, Le ble d'or has now expanded its operations to two outdoor beer gardens in fashionable parts of town.

If last week's opening of operations in Tianmu is anything to go by, Chou's beer already has a solid customer base. Chou said that Le ble d'or abided by the Reinheitsgebot, the German Purity Law, first promulgated in 1516 and one of the foundation stones of real ale movements around the world. The only ingredients permitted under this law for the manufacturing of beer are malted barley, hops, yeast and water.

"We add nothing else," Chou insisted. The malt comes from Australia, the yeast from Germany (reproduced in a simple laboratory in the basement of the beer factory) and the water comes from Taipei County. The source of the water, which has traditionally been such an important aspect of brewing and distilling, is hardly reassuring, but Chou dismisses such concerns.

"We have people who can customize the water for us," he said. "We give them the profile we want and they can produce it."