Inside his Abu Dhabi gastro pub, Chad McGehee inspects shiny steel tanks fermenting a special brew: the first beer made in the conservative Arab Gulf, where alcohol has long been taboo.
The 42-year-old American is one of the founders of Craft pub in the capital of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the only licensed microbrewery in a region that is generally as dry as its desert climate.
As they seek to overhaul their image and economies in preparation for a post-oil future, some Gulf petro-states are relaxing alcohol restrictions, with entrepreneurs such as McGehee looking to benefit from the changes.
Photo: AFP
Just a few hours’ drive from Abu Dhabi lies Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of Islam, which has just one licensed alcohol store, open only to non-Muslim foreign diplomats.
Alcohol sales are heavily restricted in Oman and Qatar, and are outright banned in Kuwait, and in Sharjah, one of the UAE’s seven emirates and a neighbor to cosmopolitan Dubai.
“We hope that we can make Abu Dhabi a destination people come to for beer, like Germany, New York or San Diego,” McGehee told reporters, as patrons sipped beer nearby.
“We want to be part of that,” he said.
The UAE has steadily loosened laws around alcohol. Last year, Dubai scrapped a 30 percent tax on alcohol and removed charges on the permits that allow non-Muslims to use its licensed stores.
In 2021, Abu Dhabi became the only emirate to allow licensed venues to brew on-site, stipulating that the beer be served only on the premises.
Rules are slowly changing elsewhere: Saudi Arabia opened its store in the capital, Riyadh, this year, prompting speculation it might further relax alcohol laws in the future.
However, Saudi Arabian Minister of Tourism Ahmed al-Khateeb last month said that the national ban would remain in place.
McGehee founded Side Hustle Brews and Spirits in 2019, at that point offering the UAE’s first home-branded — albeit imported — beer.
After Abu Dhabi allowed brewing, he cofounded Craft, which offers between eight and 14 beers at a time, many of them rich in local flavors, such as karak tea, a popular drink in the Gulf.
“Whatever we find at the local souq [market], we try to make something out of it,” McGehee said at Craft, where beer taps are linked directly to the brewing tanks.
“We have used local honey, local dates, and coffee ... We have another [beer] that uses black tea and saffron and cardamom,” McGehee added, referring to the ingredients of karak tea.
In the UAE, whose population of about 10 million is 90 percent foreign, the sale and consumption of alcohol was once confined to hotel bars frequented by expatriates.
Alexandre Kazerouni, associate professor at France’s Ecole Normale Superieure, said the Gulf monarchies began to skew heavily toward conservatism and a commitment to religion after Iran’s shah was toppled in the Islamic revolution of 1979.
It was only in the 2000s that Abu Dhabi, the dominant emirate in a country with more than 9,000 mosques, began to cultivate a more liberal image, gradually relaxing social curbs including those around alcohol, which is forbidden in some interpretations of Islam.
The change of alcohol regulations “breaks with the bans that were consolidated in the ’80s and ’90s,” Kazerouni said.
“There is competition ... with Qatar and Saudi Arabia over who will embody change in the region,” he added.
Abu Dhabi, which aims to attract nearly 40 million tourists by 2030, up from 24 million last year, is also competing with Dubai, renowned as the UAE’s holiday and party hub which commands a higher international profile.
Craft customer Andrew Burgess, a Briton who has lived in the UAE for 17 years, said he has watched the country transform before his eyes.
When he first moved there, expatriates were barred from eating or drinking in public during the holy month of Ramadan, when Muslims fast from dawn to dusk.
“To come to a bar, you had to go at nighttime after everything was covered,” he said.
All that has since changed, but Western attitudes toward Gulf countries have yet to catch up.
“If I go back to England, my friends say: ‘How do you live in a Muslim country? Your wife must be suppressed and you can’t drink,’” Burgess said.
Microbreweries like Craft “will just open their eyes,” he said.
“It’s about reconstructing people’s mindsets,” he said.
Eleven people, including a former minister, were arrested in Serbia on Friday over a train station disaster in which 16 people died. The concrete canopy of the newly renovated station in the northern city of Novi Sad collapsed on Nov. 1, 2024 in a disaster widely blamed on corruption and poor oversight. It sparked a wave of student-led protests and led to the resignation of then-Serbian prime minister Milos Vucevic and the fall of his government. The public prosecutor’s office in Novi Sad opened an investigation into the accident and deaths. In February, the public prosecutor’s office for organized crime opened another probe into
RISING RACISM: A Japanese group called on China to assure safety in the country, while the Chinese embassy in Tokyo urged action against a ‘surge in xenophobia’ A Japanese woman living in China was attacked and injured by a man in a subway station in Suzhou, China, Japanese media said, hours after two Chinese men were seriously injured in violence in Tokyo. The attacks on Thursday raised concern about xenophobic sentiment in China and Japan that have been blamed for assaults in both countries. It was the third attack involving Japanese living in China since last year. In the two previous cases in China, Chinese authorities have insisted they were isolated incidents. Japanese broadcaster NHK did not identify the woman injured in Suzhou by name, but, citing the Japanese
YELLOW SHIRTS: Many protesters were associated with pro-royalist groups that had previously supported the ouster of Paetongtarn’s father, Thaksin, in 2006 Protesters rallied on Saturday in the Thai capital to demand the resignation of court-suspended Thai Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra and in support of the armed forces following a violent border dispute with Cambodia that killed more than three dozen people and displaced more than 260,000. Gathered at Bangkok’s Victory Monument despite soaring temperatures, many sang patriotic songs and listened to speeches denouncing Paetongtarn and her father, former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, and voiced their backing of the country’s army, which has always retained substantial power in the Southeast Asian country. Police said there were about 2,000 protesters by mid-afternoon, although
MOGAMI-CLASS FRIGATES: The deal is a ‘big step toward elevating national security cooperation with Australia, which is our special strategic partner,’ a Japanese official said Australia is to upgrade its navy with 11 Mogami-class frigates built by Japan’s Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles said yesterday. Billed as Japan’s biggest defense export deal since World War II, Australia is to pay US$6 billion over the next 10 years to acquire the fleet of stealth frigates. Australia is in the midst of a major military restructure, bolstering its navy with long-range firepower in an effort to deter China. It is striving to expand its fleet of major warships from 11 to 26 over the next decade. “This is clearly the biggest defense-industry agreement that has ever
RSS