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.
FAKE NEWS? ‘When the government demands the press become a state mouthpiece under the threat of punishment, something has gone very wrong,’ a civic group said The top US broadcast regulator on Saturday threatened media outlets over negative coverage of the Middle East war, after US President Donald Trump slammed critical headlines from the “Fake News Media.” The US president since his first term has derided mainstream media as “fake news” and has sued major outlets over what he sees as unfair coverage. Brendan Carr, head of the US Federal Communications Commission — which oversees the nation’s radio, television and Internet media — said broadcasters risked losing their licenses over news coverage. “The law is clear. Broadcasters must operate in the public interest, and they will
INFLUTENTIAL THEORIST: Habermas was particularly critical of the ‘limited interest’ shown by German politicians in ‘shaping a politically effective Europe Jurgen Habermas, whose work on communication, rationality and sociology made him one of the world’s most influential philosophers and a key intellectual figure in his native Germany, has died. He was 96. Habermas’ publisher, Suhrkamp, said he died on Saturday in Starnberg, near Munich. Habermas frequently weighed in on political matters over several decades. His extensive writing crossed the boundaries of academic and philosophical disciplines, providing a vision of modern society and social interaction. His best-known works included the two-volume Theory of Communicative Action. Habermas, who was 15 at the time of Nazi Germany’s defeat, later recalled the dawn of
The Chinese public maintains relatively warm sentiments toward Taiwan and strongly prefers non-military paths to improving cross-strait relations, a recent survey conducted by the Atlanta, Georgia-based Carter Center and Emory University showed. The “China Pulse” research project, which polled 2,506 adults between Oct. 27 last year and Jan. 1 this year, found that 86 percent of respondents support strengthening cultural ties, while 81 percent favor deepening economic interaction. The report, co-authored by political scientists at Emory University and advisors at the Carter Center, indicates that the Chinese public views Taiwan’s importance through a lens of shared history and culture rather than geopolitical
Cannabis-based medicines have shown little evidence of effectiveness for treating most mental health and substance-use disorders, according to a large review of past studies published in a major medical journal on Monday. Medical use of cannabinoids has been expanding, including in the US, Canada and Australia, where many patients report using cannabis products to manage conditions such as anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder and sleep problems. Researchers reviewed data from 54 randomized clinical trials conducted between 1980 and May last year involving 2,477 participants for their analysis published in The Lancet. The studies assessed cannabinoids as a primary treatment for mental disorders or substance-use
RSS