Singapore beers

It has remained unknown to me until a recent business trip that Singapore is a developed country not only in terms of its economy and infrastructure but also in terms of the wide range of beers available on this dense and bustling, but relatively small, island.

While Singapore is known around the world for its enthusiastic use of the death penalty, corporal punishment and fining people for chewing gum and not flushing after using public toilets it has remained virtually unreported that Singapore is a relative oasis of beer in an otherwise alcoholically undeveloped region.

While I have been slumming drinking cheap chemi-brews in Thailand and other South East Asian countries and quite often moaning about them to all and sundry not one person has ever mentioned that Singapore offers a good variety of domestically produced beers with three micro breweries (Brewerkz and another couple of new start ups) and two large scale breweries (Tiger and Carlsberg), not to mention the unusually good selection of imported brews equal to those available in any western country.

A visit to a Singporean supermarket uncovered an entire section dedicated to beer. Not just a shelf or a small space in a fridge but an entire dedicated row of shelves rising from the bottom to the top. I was so impressed by this that I took the photo that you see above. There was pretty much everything there from local and regional favourites such Tiger, Chang and San Miguel to international brews such as Guinness (Draft), Becks, Grolsch and Stellas Artois. They even had space for crap like Miller Lite and a number of no-brand European beers.

Some of the bars I visited also offered a tempting and varied array of brews. Most bars, restaurants and pubs normally offered two or three beers on draft but Harry’s Bar had at least five beers on tap including Guinness, Paulaner Weissbrau, Kilkenny, Carlsberg and Tiger.

The most noteworthy drinking establishment I visited was the Brewerkz Microbrewery at Riverpoint on Merchant Street. Offering nearly twenty different brews made either by themselves or by other selected microbreweries the drink menu at Brewerkz caused me much salivation. Expect a full and glowing review of the place in the near future….

It is only fair to note though that the major downside to drinking beer in Singapore is the high cost. Frequenters of Orchard Towers will pay around 12 Singapore Dollars per mug of beer, which works out to about 8 US Dollars, while those who hang around the trendy river area will pay upwards of 15 Sing Dollars. A can of Carlsberg in a 7-11 costs as much as 4 Sing Dollars but supermarkets seem to offer the best prices if you purchase in bulk.

My trip to Singapore was very enjoyable and I am quite glad that my work took me there as it had never been high on my travel wish list and I would never have visited the country under my own steam.

The sheer joy of drinking really good beer in a clean and vibrant, if expensive, city was what made my time there so pleasurable and I hope to return at some time in the future to try a few more brews.

Tiger in Popular Culture

Launched in 1932, Tiger Beer became Singapore's first locally brewed       

       

beer. It is a 5% abvbottled pale lager. As APB's exclusive flagship brand, it is available in more than 60 countries worldwide including USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and various countries in the Middle East, Europe and Latin America.

Distribution

• APB has breweries in Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, China, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, India, Sri Lanka, Laos and Mongolia. The company has a strongmarket share in several countries within the Asia Pacific Region, primarily in Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam, Cambodia, Papua New Guinea and New Zealand.
• In Malaysia, Tiger Beer is produced and marketed by Guinness Anchor Berhad (GAB).
• In the USA, Tiger Beer’s brand is well known in New York and San Francisco.
• In the UK, Tiger Beer can be found in more than 8,000 premium bars/clubs and distribution outlets in its major cities.
• Tiger Beer gained considerable popularity in Detroit in October 2006 due to the Detroit TigersBaseball Team's entrance into the 2006 World Series.

Tiger in Popular Culture

The “It's Time for a Tiger” slogan for Tiger Beer has run for decades since its inception in the 1930s.

The writer Anthony Burgess named his first novel Time for a Tiger (the first part of the Malayan trilogy The Long Day Wanes) after the advertising slogan. The beer was popular in the Malaya of the 1950s, where Burgess was working.

Burgess reveals in his autobiography that, when his Time for a Tiger was published, he asked the manufacturer, then Fraser and Neave, for a complimentary clock with the Tiger beer slogan. The brewery declined to offer this or any other free gift to him. But fourteen years later, when Burgess was more famous, it relented. In 1970, the company offered Burgess a privilege of which he could consume any of their beers free of charge while in Singapore. However, in his own words Burgess wrote in response: “But it was too late. I had become wholly a gin man.”

The beer can also be seen being poured in the 2002 movie The Transporter with Jason Statham.