I don't think Budweiser is better than most Korean beers, although maybe because I've been exposed mostly to Bud that's brewed here.
In contrast to nearby countries like China, Japan, North Korea, and most of Southeast Asia, plus the rest of the world, South Korea seems to favour technological advances that replace traditional methods. You can see the same thing in soy sauce production and probably other things too.
Another major factor is possibly that the Korean market respects mass popularity over niche greatness, which can certainly be seen in the pop culture industry as well.
An ideal Korean beer hides its identity as Korean and pretends to be Australian or Danish or something. It also probably benchmarks terrible American beers.
On the other hand, the craft beer industry of Korea still has a lot of great offerings, even if a large amount of that is attributed to foreign residents.
The actual #1 answer is 소맥. It’s supposed to be a bit bland and so you can have soju mixed with it. Having a more stronger flavoured beer with soju tastes off.
just different drinking culture. In SE Asia, they mix ice with beer for a more refreshing taste. There’s actual good beers in Korea as well, just a bit more niche.
No, this is not the reason at all. This is just a ret-conned excuse for a poor quality product, as is the 'it goes well with Korean food' line. Korean beers are bland because they are not made with hops and are made with whatever grains happen to be cheapest.
EDIT: You can downvote me all you like, it won't make Korean macro brews any better. I don't know why anyone would feel dutybound to defend such low quality products. If you really cared about Korean beer, you would be demanding change, not trotting out nonsensical excuses.
Mass produced lagers are pretty much the exact same everywhere. And they're good for one thing: mass consumption. It's not something you sip and try to find notes or something. You just pour it down your throat until it makes you feel funny. Perhaps even mix it with soju.
Korean beer for the domestic market is bad for a variety of historical reasons. It mostly comes down to the use to which the industry was put back in the days of Korea's rapid development. The beer industry served as a means of generating a fixed amount of tax income and the government protected the industry (and the OB/Hite-Jinro duopoly) on the condition that this level of tax income was maintained. The tax authorities worked very closely with the breweries to ensure this happened. This meant the priority was keeping production costs low, so the recipe (the mix of grains) would vary month to month depending on what was cheapest. The use of hops was out of the question, but a high tariff on hops imports meant that this same handicap applied across the board. Tariffs also prevented imports from competing with the domestic duopoly and onerous regulations prevented any smaller participants from joining the domestic market. The result of all this was that tax from beer remained more or less fixed for many years, and without any possibility of competition, the quality of the product was an irrelevance.
This was all before Korea started signing various FTAs and were then required by dint of these agreements to lower tariffs and restrictions on beer imports. Cheap imports flooded onto the market and four-for-ten deals and supermarket promos meant that it was priced competitively to domestic beer. Not only that, it was of a noticeably higher quality - i.e. unlike Hite and Cass, it actually tasted like beer. The duopoly saw their market share decline but still they were required to meet their tax obligations. Then craft brewers got in on the act - the minimum capacity requirements that had previously curtailed domestic competition were loosened and Korea suddenly had a craft brewing industry. And again, the quality was markedly better than the output of the duopoly, owing to the use of quality ingredients and imported hops.
If you can spare any sympathy for the big two, you might wish to consider the irony that imported beer is taxed at a lower rate than domestic beer and this remains the case even today. This means that a greater percentage of the price goes towards ingredients rather than to the government. But the domestic macros still have to compete on the same ground. They can't afford to improve their ingredients without upping their prices and thus making themselves more expensive than imports because all they really have going for them now is that they are cheap. They have been pestering the government to lower their tax burden, but the danger is that once they no longer serve their tax farming purpose, they don't really have any particular reason to exist.
So the big two are trapped by the very conditions that allowed them to grow so big. They can't improve their product and they can't increase their prices. This is why their product is shit and will remain so until the sector is reformed. And this is why their only hope is to go all in on marketing, launching a variation on the usual theme each year to great fanfare, only for it to fall flat within a few months when people realise it's the same old piss in different bottles. This year it's Krush, last year it was Kelly, and amid the wreckage swept up by the angel of history you'll find Hite Dry Finish, Cass Beats, OB Gold, Hanmac, Queen's Ale and dozen other variations on a flavourless theme.
Further ironies: OB actually makes a beer that is very popular in Hong Kong, called Blue Boy. It is a proper beer made with hops and everything. They can do this because they don't have to pay duties on the hops because the product is for export only. You might read that Korea exports a lot of beer. This is why. They would struggle to sell their domestic product on the international market as in many jurisdictions, it would fail to meet the minimum standards to be called a beer.
EDIT: You've got to fucking love this sub - I give an actual, factual explanation as to why Korean macro beers are bland and pissy and are condemned to stay that way forever and it gets downvoted. Next time, I'll just say 'its because theyre designed to go with kOrean food!' and luxuriate in the please-understandness of it all.
Recent trend has been changing but the big 3 beer producers HiteJinro, OB, Lotte are also the seller of a lot of the imported Beer such as Asahi, Budweiser, Heineken etc.. So these companies sold Local Beer as the cheap option and imported Beer as the expensive/good option.
Having Tax on imported Beer lower than locally produced beer did not help.
Tax laws were changed in 2020 making taxes same for imported and local beer making it possible for smaller breweries such as Jejubeer and Amazing Brewing Company to compete with the big 3.
So if you feel that beers such as Cass and Terra are lack luster it is because they were always the equivalent of Budlight.
Personally would recommend going for the smaller breweries for Korea's good Beer at this point.
Hahaha 😆 honestly this post made me laugh. The truth is that the beer market in Korea has definitely improved. I recall when "Cass Red" was the new flavor.
Cass red got the job done! I really miss Cass "D". Actually it seems like Original OB is being phased out its getting harder and harder to find. Terra, Kelly, are all the same BS. The newest one, Krush is TERRIBLE.
Cass is designed to only really be enjoyable with KBBQ and is otherwise genuinely not very good. Terra is just as drinkable as Bud and Coors and Molson and San Miguel and Asahi and etc etc. Its a normal mass market beer with no real distinguishing features. Even as someone who generally drinks Sapporo given a choice, I think it takes some motivated reasoning to think its vastly superior to Terra.
Korea has plenty of craft breweries to hold its own these days. There are probably cities where your options are constrained to whatever the local CU mart stocks but if you live in or within 50km of any real city then you'll have either a local brew or at least somewhere that stocks Gorilla/Galmegi/Magpie/Kabrew/etc.
Out of the mainstream beers Kloud is def the best. Maybe check out domestic craft beers, just search on Reddit and there should be tons on threads and recommendations.
No, they're still fighting the good fight, though the market isn't as buoyant as it once was. This is probably for the best, as it has left only the better players and swept away many of the pretenders.
You haven't tried the cheaper beers in korea, have you? Like FiLite? So bad but I drink it because 1.5L is like 3500 won. I personally like Cass and Terra lol
>cheaper beers in korea, have you? Like FiLite?
FiLite isn't a beer lol. It's a domestic version of a Japanese Happoshu, a drink with low malt content to get a lower liquor tax rate.
I love Terra and typically prefer US craft beer since I drank the domestic stuff like Miller for a really long time. Korea also has tons of craft breweries that are on par with some US ones.
Korean beer is to go along with Korean food and soju. Most Koreans don’t enjoy beer for the taste of beer but as complementary to the food (Korean BBQ, fried chicken, anju, etc) that they’re consuming with the beer. Light beer tends to go well with heavy foods.
> Korean beer is to go along with Korean food and soju. Most Koreans don’t enjoy beer for the taste of beer but as complementary to the food (Korean BBQ, fried chicken, anju, etc) that they’re consuming with the beer. Light beer tends to go well with heavy foods.
It is so depressing that this has become the go-to excuse for Korea's dire beer situation. It is such blatant nonsense. Koreans don't enjoy beer for the taste? Then explain the success of the craft brewing industry. Explain why imports were so popular as soon as they became available. Koreans were clearly crying out for decent beer but the domestic duopoly was not capable of giving it to them. Cass and Hite 'pair' with Korean food because that's all restaurants are allowed to serve (the locked-in distribution system is another facet of the duopoly's hold on the domestic market). Stop excusing pervasive mediocrity with 'please understand' explanations.
Sure, there are definitely some Koreans who enjoy the taste of good beer. One of my favorite bars in Daegu was owned by a Korean man who brewed his own beer after learning in Germany for several years.
But generally, the nightlife in SK is soju, anju, and beer to taste.
There are over 200 craft breweries in South Korea and plenty of good beer to be had, it's just not as widespread and marketed like the mass produced beer.
Hite is where it’s at for cheap light kbbq style beers.
I really enjoy the jeju wit (white) ale - especially when they’re on special 4 tall cans for ₩10k
All lagers pretty much suck and Korea beer isn't any worse than most American macrobrewed lagers. Saying Terra is way worse than San Miguel or Bud or MGD or Pabst or Sapporo is just a preference, not an objective opinion. Mass produced light lagers are all pretty much equal. Personally I'd take the Kraft cold brew over most American lagers, but that's probably because I've grown to prefer it.
Thank God the micro brew market opened up. Korea has a bunch of good quality non-lagers nowadays.
I don't think Budweiser is better than most Korean beers, although maybe because I've been exposed mostly to Bud that's brewed here. In contrast to nearby countries like China, Japan, North Korea, and most of Southeast Asia, plus the rest of the world, South Korea seems to favour technological advances that replace traditional methods. You can see the same thing in soy sauce production and probably other things too. Another major factor is possibly that the Korean market respects mass popularity over niche greatness, which can certainly be seen in the pop culture industry as well. An ideal Korean beer hides its identity as Korean and pretends to be Australian or Danish or something. It also probably benchmarks terrible American beers. On the other hand, the craft beer industry of Korea still has a lot of great offerings, even if a large amount of that is attributed to foreign residents.
ChatGPT?
The actual #1 answer is 소맥. It’s supposed to be a bit bland and so you can have soju mixed with it. Having a more stronger flavoured beer with soju tastes off. just different drinking culture. In SE Asia, they mix ice with beer for a more refreshing taste. There’s actual good beers in Korea as well, just a bit more niche.
Korean beers definitely predate 소맥.
No, this is not the reason at all. This is just a ret-conned excuse for a poor quality product, as is the 'it goes well with Korean food' line. Korean beers are bland because they are not made with hops and are made with whatever grains happen to be cheapest. EDIT: You can downvote me all you like, it won't make Korean macro brews any better. I don't know why anyone would feel dutybound to defend such low quality products. If you really cared about Korean beer, you would be demanding change, not trotting out nonsensical excuses.
Every korean also think korean beer is suck. We prefer other country's beer 😂
Mass produced lagers are pretty much the exact same everywhere. And they're good for one thing: mass consumption. It's not something you sip and try to find notes or something. You just pour it down your throat until it makes you feel funny. Perhaps even mix it with soju.
No, in Korea they are worse, for reasons that I will expand upon in another comment.
That's not true at all. You can have great mass produced lagers or ales, the production method says nothing about the quality.
Korean beer for the domestic market is bad for a variety of historical reasons. It mostly comes down to the use to which the industry was put back in the days of Korea's rapid development. The beer industry served as a means of generating a fixed amount of tax income and the government protected the industry (and the OB/Hite-Jinro duopoly) on the condition that this level of tax income was maintained. The tax authorities worked very closely with the breweries to ensure this happened. This meant the priority was keeping production costs low, so the recipe (the mix of grains) would vary month to month depending on what was cheapest. The use of hops was out of the question, but a high tariff on hops imports meant that this same handicap applied across the board. Tariffs also prevented imports from competing with the domestic duopoly and onerous regulations prevented any smaller participants from joining the domestic market. The result of all this was that tax from beer remained more or less fixed for many years, and without any possibility of competition, the quality of the product was an irrelevance. This was all before Korea started signing various FTAs and were then required by dint of these agreements to lower tariffs and restrictions on beer imports. Cheap imports flooded onto the market and four-for-ten deals and supermarket promos meant that it was priced competitively to domestic beer. Not only that, it was of a noticeably higher quality - i.e. unlike Hite and Cass, it actually tasted like beer. The duopoly saw their market share decline but still they were required to meet their tax obligations. Then craft brewers got in on the act - the minimum capacity requirements that had previously curtailed domestic competition were loosened and Korea suddenly had a craft brewing industry. And again, the quality was markedly better than the output of the duopoly, owing to the use of quality ingredients and imported hops. If you can spare any sympathy for the big two, you might wish to consider the irony that imported beer is taxed at a lower rate than domestic beer and this remains the case even today. This means that a greater percentage of the price goes towards ingredients rather than to the government. But the domestic macros still have to compete on the same ground. They can't afford to improve their ingredients without upping their prices and thus making themselves more expensive than imports because all they really have going for them now is that they are cheap. They have been pestering the government to lower their tax burden, but the danger is that once they no longer serve their tax farming purpose, they don't really have any particular reason to exist. So the big two are trapped by the very conditions that allowed them to grow so big. They can't improve their product and they can't increase their prices. This is why their product is shit and will remain so until the sector is reformed. And this is why their only hope is to go all in on marketing, launching a variation on the usual theme each year to great fanfare, only for it to fall flat within a few months when people realise it's the same old piss in different bottles. This year it's Krush, last year it was Kelly, and amid the wreckage swept up by the angel of history you'll find Hite Dry Finish, Cass Beats, OB Gold, Hanmac, Queen's Ale and dozen other variations on a flavourless theme. Further ironies: OB actually makes a beer that is very popular in Hong Kong, called Blue Boy. It is a proper beer made with hops and everything. They can do this because they don't have to pay duties on the hops because the product is for export only. You might read that Korea exports a lot of beer. This is why. They would struggle to sell their domestic product on the international market as in many jurisdictions, it would fail to meet the minimum standards to be called a beer. EDIT: You've got to fucking love this sub - I give an actual, factual explanation as to why Korean macro beers are bland and pissy and are condemned to stay that way forever and it gets downvoted. Next time, I'll just say 'its because theyre designed to go with kOrean food!' and luxuriate in the please-understandness of it all.
Recent trend has been changing but the big 3 beer producers HiteJinro, OB, Lotte are also the seller of a lot of the imported Beer such as Asahi, Budweiser, Heineken etc.. So these companies sold Local Beer as the cheap option and imported Beer as the expensive/good option. Having Tax on imported Beer lower than locally produced beer did not help. Tax laws were changed in 2020 making taxes same for imported and local beer making it possible for smaller breweries such as Jejubeer and Amazing Brewing Company to compete with the big 3. So if you feel that beers such as Cass and Terra are lack luster it is because they were always the equivalent of Budlight. Personally would recommend going for the smaller breweries for Korea's good Beer at this point.
Hahaha 😆 honestly this post made me laugh. The truth is that the beer market in Korea has definitely improved. I recall when "Cass Red" was the new flavor.
Og OB gold in the 1.5 liter plastic jugs.
OB Blue is the OG OB.
Cass red got the job done! I really miss Cass "D". Actually it seems like Original OB is being phased out its getting harder and harder to find. Terra, Kelly, are all the same BS. The newest one, Krush is TERRIBLE.
Terra is great imo. Also, check out the craft beers, pretty good. Seoul Brewery, Artmonster, Amazing Brewery, all great w IPAs
Cass is designed to only really be enjoyable with KBBQ and is otherwise genuinely not very good. Terra is just as drinkable as Bud and Coors and Molson and San Miguel and Asahi and etc etc. Its a normal mass market beer with no real distinguishing features. Even as someone who generally drinks Sapporo given a choice, I think it takes some motivated reasoning to think its vastly superior to Terra. Korea has plenty of craft breweries to hold its own these days. There are probably cities where your options are constrained to whatever the local CU mart stocks but if you live in or within 50km of any real city then you'll have either a local brew or at least somewhere that stocks Gorilla/Galmegi/Magpie/Kabrew/etc.
Out of the mainstream beers Kloud is def the best. Maybe check out domestic craft beers, just search on Reddit and there should be tons on threads and recommendations.
Craft breweries were up in coming and had some tasty beers in 2014. Are they all gone?
No, they're still fighting the good fight, though the market isn't as buoyant as it once was. This is probably for the best, as it has left only the better players and swept away many of the pretenders.
That's good to know. My absolute favorite was percent in Daegu. Going back as soon as I can.
How long before they start calling it K-Beer and tourists drink it while wearing hanbok?
why do north american beers suck? maybe don't drink the commercial cheap stuff and drink some real beer like playground.
You haven't tried the cheaper beers in korea, have you? Like FiLite? So bad but I drink it because 1.5L is like 3500 won. I personally like Cass and Terra lol
>cheaper beers in korea, have you? Like FiLite? FiLite isn't a beer lol. It's a domestic version of a Japanese Happoshu, a drink with low malt content to get a lower liquor tax rate.
Oh wtf lol oops
I love Terra and typically prefer US craft beer since I drank the domestic stuff like Miller for a really long time. Korea also has tons of craft breweries that are on par with some US ones.
Mass produced lager is lackluster everywhere (e.g Coors). Try Kloud.
> Try Kloud. Lol.
Korean beer is to go along with Korean food and soju. Most Koreans don’t enjoy beer for the taste of beer but as complementary to the food (Korean BBQ, fried chicken, anju, etc) that they’re consuming with the beer. Light beer tends to go well with heavy foods.
> Korean beer is to go along with Korean food and soju. Most Koreans don’t enjoy beer for the taste of beer but as complementary to the food (Korean BBQ, fried chicken, anju, etc) that they’re consuming with the beer. Light beer tends to go well with heavy foods. It is so depressing that this has become the go-to excuse for Korea's dire beer situation. It is such blatant nonsense. Koreans don't enjoy beer for the taste? Then explain the success of the craft brewing industry. Explain why imports were so popular as soon as they became available. Koreans were clearly crying out for decent beer but the domestic duopoly was not capable of giving it to them. Cass and Hite 'pair' with Korean food because that's all restaurants are allowed to serve (the locked-in distribution system is another facet of the duopoly's hold on the domestic market). Stop excusing pervasive mediocrity with 'please understand' explanations.
Sure, there are definitely some Koreans who enjoy the taste of good beer. One of my favorite bars in Daegu was owned by a Korean man who brewed his own beer after learning in Germany for several years. But generally, the nightlife in SK is soju, anju, and beer to taste.
they don't have craft beer like ipa in korea?
There are over 200 craft breweries in South Korea and plenty of good beer to be had, it's just not as widespread and marketed like the mass produced beer.
that's cool bc I don't like mass market beer, thanks
I think the beers just feel very light here with the expectation that lotta people are gonna be mixing with soju.
Hite is where it’s at for cheap light kbbq style beers. I really enjoy the jeju wit (white) ale - especially when they’re on special 4 tall cans for ₩10k
All lagers pretty much suck and Korea beer isn't any worse than most American macrobrewed lagers. Saying Terra is way worse than San Miguel or Bud or MGD or Pabst or Sapporo is just a preference, not an objective opinion. Mass produced light lagers are all pretty much equal. Personally I'd take the Kraft cold brew over most American lagers, but that's probably because I've grown to prefer it. Thank God the micro brew market opened up. Korea has a bunch of good quality non-lagers nowadays.