North Korea has at least ten major breweries and many microbreweries that supply a wide range of beer products. The top brand is the light lager Taedonggang by the state-owned Taedonggang Brewing Company.
The country's problems with goods distribution and power output have forced North Korean brewers to innovate. To minimize distribution, many restaurants and hotels maintain their own microbreweries. Because unreliable power supply makes it difficult to refrigerate beer, North Koreans have developed their own steam beer, an originally American beer style brewed in higher than normal temperatures, that is widely available.
Although the Korean liquor soju is preferred, beer comes second when it comes to consumption. Since the 1980s, beer has been within reach of ordinary North Koreans, though it is still rationed. Tourists, on the other hand, enjoy inexpensive beer without such limitations.
History
The Japanese brought beer to Colonial Korea in the 1930s in the form of German lager beers. After WWII and independence, until at least 1960, all beer in North Korea was produced domestically. By the 1980s, beer was in such wide availability that most North Koreans could drink it. Until the mid-1990s when the state rationing system started to crumble, North Koreans would receive one bottle of Korean liquor soju and three bottles of beer for every major public holiday in North Korea. All North Korean beers are bottled in domestic made glass bottles. During the North Korean famine, beer bottles were used for intravenous therapy (IV) due to the shortage of proper hospital equipment.
Although there had been breweries before, brewing in North Korea began in earnest in 2000, when the country's leader Kim Jong-il wanted to build a showcase brewery in the country. The state-owned Taedonggang Brewing Company purchased the old brewery of Ushers of Trowbridge in the United Kingdom and imported it to North Korea. In April 2002 the Taedonggang Beer Factory opened in the capital Pyongyang. The Rakwon Paradise Microbrewery and the Yanggakdo Hotel Microbrewery soon followed.
On 12 August 2016, the Taedonggang brewery opened the first beer festival in the country. The festival was cancelled for 2017, possibly due to drought.
Until recent economic difficulties, there were government-run beer halls in Pyongyang and other major cities. Nowadays beer is generally available in private restaurants that have become more common since government control on the economy has loosened.
Beer culture
North Korea has a lively beer brewing culture in spite of the country's isolation.
Beer is not the most popular alcoholic beverage among North Koreans, who generally prefer the Korean liquor soju. Consequently, North Korean beer is little known. Nevertheless, beer and soju are the two most common alcoholic drinks in the country, with 94.9 per cent of all alcohol consumed (in pure alcohol) being liquor and the remaining 5.1 per cent beer. An average North Korean consumes just under a litre of pure alcohol in the form of beer annually. Nevertheless, North Koreans are said to "love a beer as much as Europeans or North Americans". According to Josh Thomas, an amateur brewer who has toured North Korean breweries:
In the future, beer drinking is expected to trend among young people in particular. North Korean youths have begun to emulate their South Korean counterparts for whom beer and folk music was a youth trend in the 1970s.
Availability
Mass-produced beer can be found everywhere in the country, and microbreweries are also common.
North Koreans need to expend food coupons when buying beer, which will diminish their grain rations. North Korean men residing in Pyongyang can receive beer vouchers that entitle them to one or two monthly liters of beer at low-end bars. These limitations make beer a beverage primarily for the elite. It is not uncommon for donju, the nouveau riche of Pyongyang, to frequent beer houses. According to the KCNA, there are some 300 newly installed beer taps in Pyongyang, consistent with plans to open 300 pubs announced earlier. There is a "huge number" of bars in Pyongyang where beer is available. In the summer and during festivals, beer tents pop up around Pyongyang.
Tourists can buy beer with foreign currency without the limitations that apply to North Koreans. A beer in international hotels cost about two euros. Although for tourists, according to Josh Thomas, the actual "price of drinking North Korean beer is bowing to a lot of statues of Kim Il-Sung and Kim Jong-Il, listening to their version of the Korean war, and eating anything and everything they give you to eat".