for bars with wide selection, try beer mania or the newly reopened stumble inn. danger doyles is ok during happy hour prices. if in the lido area, you might also find eudora station of interest.

there are two german brewpubs with decent beer, drei kronen and paulaner. but they are pricey. imported german drafts can be found at the two schindler’s locations.

another interesting brewpub is the okhotsk brewery. only place in beijing that i know of trying to brew four distinct styles: czech pils, bavarian hefeweiss, english pale, irish stout. the quality is only mediocre for the latter two however.

strictly belgian brews but still with a nightlife atmostphere: the Tree.

search for locations and contact info at cityweekend.com.cn or thebeijinger.com

Am a U.S. homebrewer in Beijing on business. Taking the BJCP exam in a month. Was looking for suggestions on where to spend a good Saturday night (tonight) with like-minded beer geeks drinking good beer. Found your blog. Any suggestions would be helpful, and if you should find yourself free for a beer, I’d be happy to buy you one.

Richie

Currently on tap: American Wheat, American IPA,
In the fermenter: Robust Porter, German Hefe, Mango Wheat,
Next up: Belgian Strong, Scottish 90/

westvleteren isn’t exported to anywhere legally. the monks only allow it to be sold at the abbey and at the abbey’s cafe. everywhere else is grey- and black market, including the ebay auctions.

Unfortunately the Beijing I used to know is no longer there – it too had a beer culture. We used to buy as much Beijing pijiu as we could carry then walk the hutongs looking for hidden treasures. Then we would go stand at the gate of the Russian Embassy hoping to get someone to let us in and take us to the bar where they had some real beer. But usually we just ended up at Charlie’s bar. A favorite hang-out was a place called, of all things, “BEER”. It wasn’t actually named “BEER”, it just had a huge old unlit neon sign above the door that said “BEER”, so we named it that. I heard from someone that it was actually a house of ill-repute – probably just a rumor. I do know they didn’t actually have beer.

From your post it seems you like you need to be the importer and distributor of Westvleteren in China.

firstly, you should know that i hope to update this blog more frequently, but at the moment am preoccupied with other matters. thus, more diverse coverage is still forthcoming (i hope). indeed plenty of other beers are available in china, including the duchesse, as well as many classic german and belgian brews (all belgian trappists except for westvleteren are imported to china). secondly, there is admittedly my own bias towards american brews, partly due to the bad (or non-existent) reputation of american brewing in china, and which i dedicate myself towards rectifying. and of course, as my full disclosures mention, i currently also work for DXCEL, which is the importer/distributor of most of the american craft beer that comes into the country. (btw – dogfish head brews are personally hand-carried. DXCEL does NOT import anything from them – yet…) meanwhile, the belgian and german brews are already imported by other, MUCH larger food/beverage importers. DXCEL is a MUCH smaller company by comparison, and is currently focused mainly on american and some british beers.

Why do you drink mostly American craft beers and the widely distributed Belgian and German beers? It seems you include very few Belgian or German specialty beers in your tastings (unless they were hand-carried to China). Are they unavailable in China? It seems your employer would have access to it all. If they can get Dogfish Head can’t they get Duchesse de Borgogne? As you know, many of these European specialty beers are on the shelves in some of the better American liquor stores. Are they not available in China?

I read a few of your reviews on BA. Thanks for those, they are good.

I look forward to your reply.

–Mark