Basic Brain Dissembler

Been remiss in the last couple of days with the blog, so I'm playing catchup today - writing this and the next entry on Sunday 17th.

This is a snapshot of the Max tap at the pub. Max is one of the better Korean-made beers here, which is not to say that it is very good. Korean beer is widely known to be not up to the standards of many other beer-producing nations, for not good reason which I can distinguish. Few countries enjoy a glass or two more than the Koreans, so you would think that they would get quite a bit of practice at making the damn stuff but it doesn't appear to have happened. Now I am fully aware that volume-brewed beers are not designed to taste like a fine craft ale because the emphasis is, obviously, on volume. You need to get as much of that shit out into the pubs and shops as fast as possible, and damn it all to hell if the IBU count isn't in the triple digits. That said other countries seem to manage. Austria, Germany, Belgium, even nearby countries like Japan and China seem to manage. Most daningly of all, those who have tried it suggest that North Korean beer tastes better than the domestic products in my current home. If an impoverished Communist dictatorship can make better beer than you, you are doing something wrong.

Now things are changing very rapidly here, and they have been for a couple of years now. Craft beer and homebrew culture has taken root in certain neighbourhoods and those roots are growing quickly, beginning in Itaewon in central Seoul but now stretching into other parts of the capital and even into other cities across the country. These beers are very expensive due to high import taxes, and the more creative small breweries here are stuck with expensive ingredient costs and weird tax restrictions dependent on what style of beer you're making, but these will become easier as both government and bigger companies here start to fully appreciate the potential of this new trend. Already in the space of a couple of years certain rules have been relaxed and I can think of no reason why this won't continue to be the case.

Of course there will always be a place for a few of the local brew. Whisper it, but I really don't mind drinking cheap stuff if the atmosphere is right, and Korean beer is at least very easy on the wallet. But the more people are taking in an interest in what's going in their glass, the better things will be for the drinking population of Korea - and when one day I see a fine bottle of Korean craft ale gracing the shelves of my old shop back in Edinburgh I'll raise a toast to everyone who saw that vision just a few short years ago.