Taishan Beer (Joint venture with German Craft producer Kritzer) – Shandong

A business visit last year to Shandong involved a stop in Binzhou and a very local lunch in the middle of summer wherein a bottle of Taishan beer was produced. A further visit this week to the same location had a more investigative approach and the return home with a carton.

The Shandong Taishan Beer Co., Ltd was established in 1979 and then transferred to a Sino-Hong Kong joint venture in 2000 that started to invite German beer experts as technical advisors for brewing process which appears to have has led to a further joint venture with Crouts. They have a website www.china-kritzer.comwhich has very funny sino-German beer maid interaction that shortly after opening our Sino censor friends closed local access to the site. I will be interested to know whether members had any difficulty. As a consequence of an inability to further research the sampled lager this post lacks technical follow though. Kritzer appears to be a German Craft beer and describes its interaction with Taishan as “being made of German high quality yeast and Taishan sierra 280 metres deep places high quality natural water” looks like the Chinese did the English translation.

Chinese beers sampled already by BotF are generally been found to be watery lacking strong flavours but the likes of Tsingtao are entirely drinkable. The Taishan beer sampled by this correspondent is a wheat ale that has all the hallmarks of what you would expect from a German beer. It is as thick and as malty as a Coopers and the flavours lingers.

The 720 ml standard bottle is sensational but it does lack some punch with at 2.6% alcohol content. None the less this Sino-German Beer JV gets a big thumbs up.