Korea in Brief

I did not drink any craft beer in Korea.

I did, however, drink plenty of the standard stuff over the short stay in Seoul. And while the beer fails to improve on Japanese standard offerings, it comes much cheaper over there, which was a welcome change.

Besides beer, there was plenty of other drinks to sample, including makgeolli and soju.

Since I was there for a wedding, the schedule was tight and exploring time was limited. When a free day came up, a few of us checked out the shopping district Insadong and a nearby covered market full of stalls selling ready-to-eat food or take-home fare.

I had the Beer in Korea iPhone app at the ready, but there wasn't enough time to put it to use.

Generally speaking, Korea was great. I loved the food, had a lot of fun meeting people and hanging out with friends from Japan, and had a few days away from reality, even if reality is the sometimes-surreal Japan.

There will be a next time. Friends and I are already discussing when we might get over there again, with a bit more time to explore on our own.

If I can I'll post some photos later on.

Beer in Korea

Two weeks ago, I downloaded an iPhone application for studying Hangul, the Korean writing system. Two hours ago, I downloaded Beer in Korea, the app for finding craft beer. The 10 minutes I spent browsing the beer app trumps the time spent on the Hangul app by roughly 9 minutes.

So maybe I won't be reading any Hangul, but if I can find the time, I might be trying an interesting beer.

My time in Korea will be so limited,, outside of perhaps one afternoon, that I have not been too worried about learning Korean. Multi-lingual signage, the help of friends and intuition should steer me just fine (I hope).

The trip revolves around a wedding ceremony for two friends who live in my little town in Mie. He is Japanese and runs a nice little bar in town (Premium Malts on tap; Corona, Sam Adams among bottled choices). She is Korean, and teaches her native tongue in a classroom adjacent to the bar.

They already tied the knot here in Japan, but in lieu of a formal ceremony, the bond was celebrated by a surprise party at the bar.

Now, the formal part comes in Korea. A few dozen friends of the couple from Japan are making the trip across the Sea of Japan (aka East Sea if you're Korean) to attend the wedding.

It marks my first trip to Korea, and aside from the wedding I am very much looking forward to limited exploring, eating and drinking.

And while my Hangul skills are certainly suspect, at least I have Beer in Korea to guide me as best it can.


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Practically speaking, although my trip comes next week, I can already endorse the Beer in Korea app. Even the background information in the app served as a nice primer about what I might encounter, and the frank descriptions make clear what bars to hit and which to miss. Whether or not I'll get to any of the listed bars on this trip is yet to be determined. But either way, I'm glad to have the app in the books.

"Local" beer shipments increase this summer over last

Buried deep in a Kyodo News business round-up from a few days ago comes this promising stat: Compared with last year's June to August period, shipments of local beer grew by 8.1 percent this year. The tally includes figures from "45 leading local brewers," with shipments reaching 2,005 kiloliters. The Big Five, meanwhile, gained just .7 percent. Kyodo, referencing information form Tokyo Shoko Research, attributes the increase in craft beer shipments to marketing, such as being active in events through the especially hot summer (article accessed here).

While this is a fairly narrow window of data, I think it can be seen as positive. I am not sure where the numbers are on a larger scale (that would be interesting to see), but perhaps it means a few top brewers are finding their niche, in terms of both quality and marketing.

Dry Days ... Kansai Scene article ... Blog Comment followup

Ever since the second-to-last Ise Kadoya nomihoudai, I've been dry in terms of craft beer. This has not been on purpose, but funds have been tight and supply limited down here in Mie.

It has also been a busy season at my real job, thanks to speech contest season. The kids in my high school's English club have to practice daily to prepare for their contests. It's this time of year that it actually feels like a proper job. So I really cannot complain.

In other personal news, back in the summer I took a trip to Gifu and Nagano for a hike and visit to a traditional town. I posted back then about trying a Kisoji Beer at 11 a.m. A non-beer focused look at that trip is in the October issue of Kansai Scene magazine. Take a look here.

Money will continue to be tight in the coming weeks as I look ahead to a mid-month trip to Korea for the wedding of some friends. Of course, I'll seek out some craft beer over there and report back.

Thanks to the commenters (here and on Facebook) about the last couple posts. As for the non-alcoholic beer -- I do see the value in a decent non-alcoholic beer for someone who cannot consume alcohol but likes the taste of the drink without it. Though I guess if it were me as the designated driver, I'd probably vie for some other soft drink instead of some kind of mainline zero percenter. I would be curious to try a non-alcoholic craft beer though.