A world trip of beer....

The great thing about Taiwan is the great variety of Asian beer that isn't (normally) available back home. While some less-than-great American beers are sold here for ridiculous prices (Old Milwaukee, PBR, Budweiser, to name a few) there are some rather interesting Asian beers available.

While last at the supermarket, I decided to pick up a few to sample.



From left to right - Asahi from Japan (one of my favourites back home), San Miguel Cerveca from The Phillipines, Blue Ice from Hong Kong (no relation to Labatt's Blue - I am drinking it as I am typing it, it's pretty lousy), Essential Beer from Korea and Taiwan Beer from, of course, Taiwan. I was looking forward to sampling some Chinese beers, but unfortunatley they aren't available here because of the polticial situation between Taiwan and Mainland China. Because of a ban of Taiwan Beer in the People's Republic of China, the people of Taiwan took it upon themselves to not buy Chinese brands of Beer (Such as Tsingtao, another one of my favourites back home). Because of this, Taiwan Beer has an 80% market share of the Beer market here.

I haven't yet tried San Miguel - Essential Beer is alright, Taiwan Beer is great and Asahi is good too (not as good as Sapporro as Japanese beers go). Blue Ice is lousy - it's watery and has a pretty skunky aftertaste.