What’s Up in Beer: Your May Holiday Drinking Guide With New and Old Brews, and Deals Galore
Beijing is treating us nicely this spring/summer, with singing birds, blue skies, a pleasant breeze … and lots of beers.
Great Leap Brewing has two new saisons on tap, Vitus the Great and Sleepy Murphy, a mango saison. The former was a co-brew that took place in autumn 2016 between Great Leap (Carl Setzer and Enda Winters), Boxing Cat (Michael Jordan), and Warpigs Brewpub (Kyle Wolak and Foo Lan-Xin) in Copenhagen. If you seem to remember this brew already coming out, you're not suffering from deja vu; it was meant to be released a few weeks back but was postponed because of unforeseen circumstances. The brew (5.8 percent ABV) uses Qingdao flower hops, Iron Buddha Oolong tea, and rock sugar, making it a Belgian-style saison with a Chinese twist and a rich hay-color.
GLB's other new beer, the Sleepy Murphy mango saison (6.6 percent ABV) is another cobrew, this time with brewmaster Mike Murph of Lervig. This saison is inspired by Sri Lankan salted mangos and has the aromas to match, as well as citrus and spicy notes and a refreshing finish. Lastly, if you missed the Mikkeller party last week, don't fret just yet as Mikkeller beers will soon be on tap at all three GLB locations.
This Labor Day (May 1, Monday), Jing-A will open at 11am and will be serving their Brewer’s Brunch (until 3pm). To celebrate the working masses, their Worker's Pale Ale will be on a buy-two-get-one-free deal all day long.
The Jing-A team also recently went on a bonding excursion to Xi’an with Laszlo and Michele from Moonzen Brewery (from Hong Kong) to see the tools that brewers used in the late Yangshao period (3400-2900BC). Upon their return to Beijing the brewed a Mijiaya Neolithic Ale using a 5,000-year-old recipe with the help of Stanford and the Shaanxi Institute of Archaeology. Brewed using broomcorn millet, barley, mountain yam, Job’s tears barley, hawthorn, lily bulb, honey, and snake gourd root. The 3.7 percent ABV non-hops beer was then soured with wild yeast collected on a farm in Shaanxi. Head to the taproom now for a taste of what China's ancestors used get down on.
If you happen to visit Taipei over the holiday, try to drop by Driftwood at Ximenting on April 29 (5pm-late, 46 Kunming Street, Wanhua District, Taipei, +886 2 2388 3699), where Jing-A co-founder Alex Acker will hook up with our favorite Taipei brewery Taihu Brewing. The Meet the Brewer party will include eight Jing-A beers on tap, including their Pineapple Cake pale ale (a collab with Taihu Brewing), Dongbei IPA, One Beer Two Systems (a collab with Moonzen Brewery), Lucky 8 lager, Suan Ge Pi, PuPu porter (a collab with Nøgne Ø), Flying Fist IPA, and Full Moon farmhouse ale.
Over at Arrow Factory, A New Leaf Oatmeal IPA is back on tap this weekend. All Arrowhead members will receive their first pint for free. Also on Saturday, Arrow's Dark Ages Black IPA will be on buy-one-get-one-free at their Liangma River location all day long. Brewed using a blend of dark malts and molasses, this dark and hoppy brew is one of their stronger IPAs.
Arrow may also be releasing another beer over the weekend, but they're keeping their mouth sealed. All they've let slip is that it's a “light, refreshing, and served in a small glass that gets refilled every time it's emptied ...” You bad people, you!
For those wanting to guzzle down on Arrow Factory’s bottled Guanxi pale ale, 8-Bit will hold a rooftop cookout on Saturday (Apr 29) at 3pm, and the Guanxi will be on sale for RMB 25 until 8pm.
Finally, since you have some extra time this weekend, you might want to head out and try something new in the form of NBeer's latest pub in Wukesong. Check here for our review, which has over 40 taps and bottled varieties, as well as 7,000 empty bottles, making for a sort of vast "beer museum."
Enjoy your holiday and stay strong!
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Email: tracywang@thebeijinger.com
Twitter: @flyingfigure
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Photos courtesy of venues, Tracy Wang
