Concomitantly with the successful “First Taedonggang Beer Festival” of Pyongyang, here is a very special article on the surprising Northkorean microbrewery.
For a country that experienced even famines, North Korea has a surprisingly large range of beers. And if you’re a microbrewing enthusiast, it might be the last country you’d think of visiting on a tasting tour. That’s exactly what Josh Thomas did, though, from 30 March to 6 April this 2016.
Thomas, who lives in Hong Kong and works in advertising as a creative technologist, is a self-confessed lover of all beer things. Though an amateur microbrewer himself, he “might be moving over into the professional realm soon with some mates”, he told Wired.co.uk. “I’ve been brewing beer for a number of years, and love to travel the globe trying beers from different cultures.”
North Korea has a robust domestic beer brewing culture, despite its isolation from the outside world. Famously, the regime bought a British brewery in 2000 for £1.5m and had the whole thing shipped and rebuilt on the edges of the capital, Pyongyang.
That formerly German-owned Ushers equipment now produces Taedonggang beer, one of the most popular domestic brands (which is, like every other enterprise in North Korea, state-owned).
The people of North Korea love a beer as much as Europeans or North Americans, but the culture around brewing is obviously different in some unique ways. Thomas’ itinerary in his trip took him to many of the same museums, parks and national monuments that every tourist to North Korea sees, but it also featured special stops at some North Koren breweries where he could share knowledge with locals and sample the local suds.
Wired.co.uk spoke to Thomas to get a feel for this less-reported part of North Korean culture.
Why did you want to go?
Thomas: I always had an interest in traveling to out-of-the-way places that are hard to visit, and between my interest in Cold War history, my proximity to the country living in Hong Kong, and a personal interest in Korean culture and history, it seemed like the time to go. While travel to the DPRK seems extremely exotic to people in the West, it’s actually quite common for Hong Kong residents. Two of my close work friends traveled to the DPRK months earlier than I did and they really convinced me that it wasn’t as insane as propaganda tells us.
Finally, and most importantly, the blog “American in North Korea” was my final inspiration to go. Joseph Ferris’s adventures in the country and his mind-bogglingly beautiful photos showed me a side of the country that I had never read about or seen before, and I organised the trip through Young Pioneer Tours based in Beijing with Joe as our guide.
The itinerary for your trip was designed around your passion for beer — what did it include?
All itineraries in the DPRK have to be approved by the government so the best you, as a tourist, can do is propose a clear schedule. Basically I spent eight months reading every piece of literature ever written about North Korea. I worked with Joe to visit all three major breweries in the country: The Paradise Microbrewery, the Yanggakdo Hotel Microbrewery, and the Taedonggang National Brewery. Obviously, this wasn’t a full trip’s worth of sites, so we filled the gaps with many “normal” tourist attractions like museums and national monuments, and even other “off the beaten path” attractions like the “Concrete Wall Observation Post”, where you look into South Korea through binoculars.
What were the immediate characteristics of North Korean beer that you noticed?
It certainly isn’t a light lager like OB or Hite, beer popular in South Korea! Light lagers, like OB, Hite, Budweiser, Coors, or Miller are popular in many countries around the world, but certainly barely count as beer in my opinion. Great on a hot day when you need something light to drink, but not big on taste.
Because electricity is in short supply in North Korea, the refrigeration required for lagers is simply impossible, so the majority of beers we drank were either ales or “steam beers”.
Steam beer?
Steam beer is a style invented in the United States — the only beer style to originate from the US — during the California Gold Rush. Based on German-style lagers, but fermented at ale temperatures, it was a popular drink created out of necessity in locations where refrigeration is impossible. It seems the North Koreans discovered this style by accident, and their beer is very similar to some American steam beer brand. Darker, fuller-bodied, hoppier, and delicious, it was hands down much better than the watery South Korean beer!
Obviously we tried many different beers in the country, ranging from steam beers, to oatmeal stouts, to chocolate porters and pale ales, so its hard to generalise, but I’d have to say the average beer is a steam beer. However, all in all, they were delicious beers.
What kinds of ingredients are they restricted to?
Beer is one of the simplest things to make in the entire world. If you can make porridge, you can make beer. If you can make congee, you can make beer. If you can make bread, you can make beer. The North Koreans are incredibly clever at making do with very little, and they honestly were able to make more interesting beers than most other countries of the world. Their beers were a little short on hops, and I could explain that as they perhaps are having a hard time importing or growing them. However, I find it much more likely that, in a climate that naturally grows the hop plant, the lack of hops is more easily explained by palate of Koreans. They simply don’t like beers as hoppy as the craft beers I brew and drink.
What kind of experimentation do North Korean breweries resort to when there are ingredient shortages? Or electricity shortages?
None of the ingredients required for beer seemed to be in short supply. Unlike some of capitalist consumer goods, beer seemed to be quite readily available.
Even when driving around the street you would notice people drinking local beer, indicating that the food shortages don’t seem to limit the beer production much in the country.
However, because of the electricity cuts, they seem to stick with steam beers and ales as they do not require refrigeration.
Because of the embargo, asphalt and petrol seems to be hard to come by, leading to it being very hard (or at least not profitable) for beer to be shipped around the country. As a result, it is a country of microbreweries. The hotel makes their own beer. The bowling alley makes their own beer. The restaurants make their own beer. The national Taedonggang beer was indeed available throughout the entire country, but any location with sufficient space for a microbrewery, they seemed to build one in order to offset any supply chain inefficencies.
What was the best beer you tasted?
The best beer was by far was a wheat beer we tried at the Paradise Microbrewery. It was quite apparent that the head brewmaster of Paradise knew what she was doing. While I was not allowed to go into the back where they make the beer, I was allowed to look into the room through a window. They had brewing equipment that would rival any US microbrewery.
Did you have time to talk to different brewmasters about brewing tips and tricks? How receptive were they to sharing ideas?
I was allowed to speak with one brewer, the young woman who runs the brewing operation at the Yanggakdo International Hotel.
Their hotel bar has amazing steam beer on draft, fed by eight 113-litre fermenters in the back. I was invited to speak with her through a translator. One element pervasive in North Korean society is a willingness to ask for a critique of one’s work. I believe this to be an element of their socialist upbringing where they were constantly critiquing and judging their own and other’s work. She was extremely receptive, probably more than most brewers, to learn from my opinions.
I had a great discussion with her about the similarities between American steam beer and North Korean steam beer. India pale ales are extremely hoppy beers, normally infusing numerous different types of hop flowers into the beer at different times in the brew. This fascinated her, as North Koreans normally use a much lower hop content than their American counterparts, and they are more used for their preservative properties rather than for their flavor and aroma. I asked her to make me an “India pale ale” for a future trip and she agreed that it might be a nice challenge.
Are you going to try putting any of the things you learned into practice?
I always try to use my travels as inspiration for my brewing recipes. During my trip I started putting together a recipe in my head for a North Korean style beer, a very lightly hopped steam beer/brown ale hybrid called “Kim Jong-Ale”!
Did you talk to any North Koreans about your work in advertising? How was their grasp of what it was you did?
I’m a creative technologist for Ogilvy & Mather Hong Kong, and it’s my job to identify fun tech like leap motion cameras and holographic foils to create prototypes of what advertising will be like in the future. I honestly have the best job in the world. One of our guides was fascinated with technology and loved learning about my job. He had not heard about Bluetooth yet, and was fascinated learning what it was and what it was used for. While he did have huge gaps in his technical knowledge, he was extremely knowledgable about modern technology and was fascinated by the type of work I do. The idea of creating motion activated, holographic, smart ads like they have in Minority Report or Avatar didn’t seem as far fetched to a North Korean as it does to many Americans! Even concepts like modern responsive web design seemed to be quite straight forward to our guides.
Would you recommend North Korea as a trip for beer aficionados?
I don’t think a normal beer aficionado would be well suited for North Korea. Do not travel to the DPRK unless you have a deep understanding of the culture and have spent a significant amount of time learning about who they are and what they believe. Agree or disagree with their system and politics, you are visiting their country and you are their guest. You are there to listen and be respectful, as an ambassador of your country. If you aren’t comfortable doing that, don’t go!
Thanks for the article and the interview to WIRED