You might think that a Chinese craft brewer, given the relative infancy of the trend in this land, would be relatively new to the pleasures of drinking. Not Panda Brew’s owner. “I started drinking beer when I was seven!” We’re not sure if Pan Dinghao is joking or not, but when he took those first baby sips you can be sure that double IPAs and vanilla stouts were nowhere to be seen in China. And he only realized this when he moved to Canada many years later.
“In the bars there you had endless lists of different beers, yet the only Chinese one was right at the end: Tsingtao. So I wanted to produce something to represent China abroad other than Tsingtao.” That was several years ago, around the time a friend in Canada taught Pan how to homebrew. In 2014 the result is Panda Brew (motto: keep calm and carry on drinking), which has just opened a colossal new brewpub off Beijing’s hub of gluttony, Gui Jie. Pan tells us that their bottled beer (look for the distinctive panda eyes label) can be bought in 30 different Chinese cities and has reached as far as Tibet and Xinjiang. World domination is the next step.
Despite the branding’s obvious nod to China’s favorite emblem, it’s hard to know how to place Panda amongst the many emerging brewers in the city. The bar goes for the industrial, garage vibe, but it’s ended up with a kind of clean, metallic coffee shop interior, one replete with gaudy manga-style murals. Pan and his team are courteous and self-effacing. Panda drinkers aren’t weekend warriors, we feel – more joystick warriors. Comic book readers turned craft beer pioneers, maybe. But the most distinguishing feature, as that name would suggest, is its nationality.
“Of course, we’re completely Chinese,” says Pan. “All my team is local and we are catering to Chinese tastes. It’s influenced by beers I used to drink in Montreal, lots of German and Belgian styles, but we’re aiming at the Chinese market. Chinese palates aren’t so used to intense bitterness, so we wanted to make an easy-drink beer. They’re pleasant and mild, with a lower IBU [bitterness rating] than most American beers. We don’t want to scare people off.”
It’s a more subtle approach to forging an identity than going for brews with unusual Chinese ingredients. “We need to get the foundation right before we go for wacky beers… educate people on how to taste ale. Then we can play around with other ingredients. We hope to have one local Chinese ingredient in all beers, though, like the Hunan honey we sourced for our Pure Red Honey Ale (RMB38).”
Indeed the beer list is modest compared to many around town, but it contains all the key players for any self-respecting brewpub (Pale Ale RMB38, Stout RMB45, and an award-winning Wheat RMB35). “Our first pub was tiny,” says Pan. “Just room for five or six people and a 50-liter capacity. Now we have this huge taproom… we believe it’s going to be a success.”
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