Durian ale and pulut hitam stout: Singapore’s craft beer underdogs take on big brands

SINGAPORE – While Tiger Beer might be the first thing that comes to mind when thinking of Singaporean brews, a growing wave of craft breweries is redefining what it means to drink local.

These brewers are infusing their beers with staples in Asian cuisine and hyper-local storytelling, as well as putting their own take on beer styles popularised elsewhere. From durian ale to kueh salat rice lager to pulut hitam stout, these beers offer a distinctly Singaporean twist.

Though commercial beers – Tiger, Heineken and Asahi– are sold at coffee shops and bar tops, these artisanal brews are harder to find.

In Singapore, one can spot local craft beer on a more disparate set of shelves, such as the co-working space WeWork, home-grown eatery chain Song Fa Bak Kut Teh and a growing number of craft beer-focused establishments.

In pursuit of these home-grown concoctions, The Straits Times visited Locality, a bar tucked away in the basement of Hexacube mall in Joo Chiat and specialising exclusively in local craft beer.

True to the DIY and bootstrapping ethos of the craft beer movement, Locality is a one-man show run by Singaporean Dennis Yeo, and has become a popular hangout spot among craft beer enthusiasts.

The bar’s personal touch is evident, from patrons who know the bartender by name to pint glasses with “Locality” written on them in marker. The cat-themed decor, complete with a mural of a former feline regular (a house cat since adopted by Mr Yeo), adds to the bar’s quirky charm.

Mr Yeo, 34, first launched Locality in 2021 at a smaller space in a different mall five minutes’ walk away from its current location. The word-of-mouth success of the initial location meant upgrading from the 200 sq ft venue to its current 600 sq ft space.

Serving up hyper-local brews

As Mr Yeo pours samples of the diverse local beers on tap – from Alive Brewing Co’s Holy Smooth ($14.50), a New England-style IPA, to Sunbird Brewing Company’s Triumphant Triple Fruited Sour ($17.50), a sweet smoothie-style beer – his patrons wax lyrical about their favourite brews and why they have become proponents of the #SupportLocal movement.

For craft beer enthusiast Joe, who declined to give other personal details, the uniqueness of craft beer comes down to “taste memory”.

“Pulut hitam, shan zha – these are all childhood taste memories,” he says, referring to the black glutinous rice dessert and haw flakes, some of the nostalgic inspirations behind the beers on tap at Locality. “Certain flavours resonate, and that’s why I think craft beer is a very local product.”

He adds: “When I travel, I make a point of visiting local craft beer bars, because what they’re making is a reflection of what local flavours and local tastes are like.”

In Singapore, the low production quantities of craft breweries mean they primarily feed the immediate communities around them.

“It’s a hyper-local product,” Mr Joe says, adding that craft beer’s appeal is akin to that of a neighbourhood hawker stall known only by those in the area.

Likewise, The 1925 Brewing Co’s owner Yeo Eng Kuang says his aim is to make beers with uniquely Asian flavours that pair well with local cuisine.

“Your typical US and UK beers are very bitter and very strong, and that isn’t a beer that would always pair well with the food we eat, which is a lot more diverse, with more spices and flavours,” says the 39-year-old, who founded the brewery in 2014 with his brother and uncle.

The 1925 Brewing Co (

the1925.com.sg

) is known for infusing its beers with flavours which are common in South-east Asian cuisine and culture.

Hits include Liang Teh, a chrysanthemum-infused lager, and the Lychee Pale Lager, which is rooted in the childhood memories of its brewers.

Mr Yeo says his grandfather would buy baskets of lychees for his grandmother, as it was her favourite fruit.

“Old people, right? They don’t say ‘I love you,’ they don’t buy flowers. His symbol of affection was a basket of lychees.”

These lychees would eventually find their way to the grandkids, becoming a cherished childhood memory that Mr Yeo wanted to recreate with his beer.

In the sweltering heat of 1925’s Mandai-based brewing facility, the lychee lager is a refreshingly crisp brew. And, true to the 1925 ethos, it will pair well with local favourites such as Hainanese chicken rice or fish head curry.

The experimentation does not end there. One of Mr Yeo’s more eyebrow-raising brews is Musang King Ale, a durian-flavoured beer released in 2021 to much fanfare and local press coverage.

“We were the first commercial brewery to do durian beer on such a large scale,” he says.

The reason no one else had tried it was twofold, he adds.

First, the durian is a divisive fruit. Second, some brewers were concerned the fruit’s strong smell might linger in the brewing tank or contaminate the production line.

Still, this did not daunt Mr Yeo. “If you want to champion using Singapore ingredients and Asian flavours, it’s inevitable that you use durians,” he says.

This particular beer’s flavour journey called for numerous brewing attempts, across different varieties of durian, before Mr Yeo found the right balance with the musang king durian – because of its creamy sweetness – and found that mixing it with mango puree could even out the drink’s taste and complexity.

Sipping on the Musang King Ale, the pungence of durian is unmistakable. Its taste is surprisingly light, with faint bitter notes, but there is a lingering aftertaste.

The brewery is reviving the ale as a limited run for the 2024 edition of Beerfest Asia, where 1925 and other local breweries are exhibiting their goods from July 11 to 14 at the Kallang Outdoor Arena.

More than just nostalgia

For enthusiasts, craft beer’s unusual flavours are part of the adventure.

“It’s a big part of what makes each country’s beers unique,” says Mr Nicholas Lim, a craft beer enthusiast and regular patron at Locality. ​​

The 38-year-old non-governmental organisation worker adds: “You have everything, from kopi luwak to pulut hitam in a stout, and lagers with pandan and coconut to replicate kueh salat.”

The Pulut Hitam Imperial Stout, based on the glutinous rice dessert, is a favourite creation of brewer Clive Tan, founder of home-grown outfit Sunbird Brewing Company (

www.sunbirdbrewing.com

).

“Nostalgia is an intentional part of the design,” says Mr Tan, 33. “Our aspiration is to be one of the best in Singapore and South-east Asia, but we have to start from our roots. How we grew up is a key component in terms of how we innovate.”

Mr Tan’s journey as a brewer began 10 years ago as a fresh graduate in economics and finance from the University of London.

He decided to seek out temporary gigs in the beer industry before committing to a career in finance. This detour wound up altering his career trajectory when he found himself falling in love with the art of brewing.

In 2020, he founded his brewery – named after Singapore’s unofficial national bird, the Crimson Sunbird – and now leads a small team of five.

However, he says brewers must ensure the local flavour suits the style in which the beer is brewed. Beers at Sunbird typically take numerous batches to perfect, and the research and development process can take from one to three months.

For the Kueh Salat Rice Lager, Tan wanted the drinking experience to mirror eating the Peranakan dessert.

“We want you to pick up the beer and smell the familiar scent of kueh salat before drinking it. With the first sip, the coconut and rice flavours emerge, just like when you bite into the pastry. And in the middle taste, that’s when you get the pandan notes,” he says.

Another popular creation is the Vermillion Hawthorne Hibiscus Gose, initially brewed for 2023’s National Day.

Inspired by the childhood snack haw flakes, this beer resonated with many of the enthusiasts who spoke to ST.

The gose, a beer style originating from Goslar, Germany, takes on a reddish hue when infused with hawthorn, much like the candy it emulates. The hibiscus adds floral notes, with the final drink taking on a subtle sweetness that makes it stand out among other beers on tap.

At Locality, where Sunbird’s brews frequently feature on the rotating taps, craft beer enthusiast Jeremy Lim explains his preference for craft over commercial beers.

“You can say commercial beer tastes good, and it’s consistent. But what craft beer offers is variation. Even from keg to keg, within a single batch, (Locality owner) Dennis will tell us this keg is okay, this keg is slightly worse or better, or slightly tangy,” says the 31-year-old bank employee.

This variance is what makes craft brewing more of an art form than a science, an idea echoed by other patrons.

“When you go to a concert and every single time, the artiste plays the solo a little differently – that’s what you’re getting with craft beer,” he adds.

This, along with the time-limited nature of many beers on offer, means no two visits to a local craft beer establishment are likely to be the same.

Moreover, bar patrons at craft beer-focused establishments visited by ST say these venues foster a strong community spirit, as they draw regulars who bond over a shared interest in drinking local and experimenting with new flavours.

David versus Goliath

For long-time operator Kuok Meng Chao, who co-founded the hawker centre craft beer stall Smith Street Taps in 2013, the growth of local craft brewing over the past decade is evident. 

“Local craft brewing has really grown over the past 10 years,” he says, noting the new breweries that have emerged since 2020 and the rise of new competitors in the bar scene, who are branching out beyond Singapore’s downtown core and into the heartland.

Mr Kuok adds that local brewers are becoming “braver in their beer styles”.

Still, craft beer business owners say their ecosystem remains fragile and fraught with challenges.

At another craft beer-focused establishment, Good Luck in Haji Lane, owner Kevin Ngan, 44, offers a more downbeat perspective on the scene.

He says the local brewing scene has experienced a series of growth spurts and contractions over the past decade. Establishments wrestled with restrictions brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic, and some breweries floundered as they struggled to find their market.

“This is our ninth year pushing the craft beer agenda in Singapore,” says Mr Ngan, who opened an offshoot burger bar, Good Intentions, which specialised in craft beer and closed a year after it launched in 2021.

He points the finger at the rising cost of living and what he sees as an expatriate exodus limiting the audience of the craft beer scene in Singapore.

“The market has shrunk,” he says. “I wouldn’t say that it’s the best period for craft beer development globally.”

Yet, some of his patrons, such as corporate strategy consultant Sebastian Koh, remain unbothered by the higher price points of craft beers.

“It’s a different market from the commercial beers,” says the 34-year-old. “Those, I would drink at home or on a normal night when I just want a pint.

“Craft beers are for more of an occasion. Because of the price, sure, but also because an occasion calls for a different kind of taste experience.”

At Good Luck, which was hosting a tap takeover by Alive Brewing Co, pints ranged from $19 to $25. A pint of Heineken or Tiger typically starts at $12 at other venues.

Business owners speaking to ST say that striking the right balance between price and affordability is a challenge, as the use of premium ingredients and small batch sizes drive up costs, making it more difficult to compete with the scale and affordability of imported beers.

More than once, parallels were drawn by these brewers to David and Goliath.

Commercial beer brands offer bars support in the form of merchandise, such as branded coasters and glassware, as well as equipment like taps and lightboxes sometimes.

The world’s top 10 breweries accounted for 70.7 per cent of beer produced in the world in 2022, according to data compiled by German hop trader BarthHaas.

Smaller and bootstrapped local craft breweries lack such resources.

“As one of the smallest breweries, we definitely can feel the barriers,” says Mr Cheong Qing Yang, co-founder of Alive Brewing Co.

But there is hope yet, the 37-year-old adds, because locally minded craft beer establishments like Locality, Get Some and Good Luck are feeding local interest in their brews.

The former finance employee co-founded Alive Brewing Co (

alivebrewing.co

) in 2020 with his friend Ryan Yue, also 37 and a former commodities trader.

For Mr Cheong, the decision to set up the brewery stemmed from his quest for styles of beer that were hard to find in Singapore.

“There were a lot of up-and-coming beer styles that were not available locally, and the only way I could access them was to make my own. And that’s where my home-brewing inspiration and motivation came from,” he says.

He points to a pint of his Hop Alchemy, a New England-style IPA, that he pulls from the tap. “We call them hazy beers, and it’s really important to have them fresh, which is where brewing locally really makes sense.”

Another of the brewery’s hits is Magic Technique 07, a smoothie-like beer made with a mix of tropical fruit: mango, passionfruit and banana.

The beer is so named because it is the seventh iteration of the brewery’s use of a technique of blending fruit with beer to create a smoothie sour ale, another hard-to-access style that the pair have brought to Singapore’s shores.

“Our beer is made with a lot of love. It’s only the two of us making these, and every single beer has gone through our hands,” says Mr Cheong. “Nobody else is involved in making them. This way, we can oversee the whole process.”

Mr Yue adds: “If you look at the big brands, it’s very corporate.

“As more and more people drink our beers, they understand there’s a sense of ownership to it. There’s a completeness to how the idea came about.”