Various alcoholic beverages in the Philippines like the local craft beer craze is a new experience for some people. This is a local organic product offered by bars or liquor stores. The Philippine crafted beer has the unique and distinct taste of real beers that you can’t find anywhere else. For beer lovers, this is a welcoming treat. Some owners and producers of crafted beers are also showcasing these organic product in organic trade shows held in different areas like Metro Manila.

The term “craft beer” means beers that are crafted by master brewers, investing plenty of time and exerting more effort to attain the perfect taste of this product. The amount of ingredients is meticulously measured to get the perfect taste for a beer. In actual observation, only a very small percentage of the beer market makes up this type of alcoholic beverage in the Philippines compared to large companies. In reality, advertisements and leverage makes up in the popularity of particular brand of beers.

In Bacolod City, Bogs Brew is one of the famous local craft beers. This is a manufacturer that is rather independent, conventional and quite small.  This beer has become so popular and interesting that some bars and even restaurants already sell this product alongside their dishes. This crafted beer has a local muscovado sugar and spring waters that are an excellent change from the usual beers in the market. The flavor is strikingly different yet it is exotic and unique on its own.
If you want to discover new things, try experimenting on different alcoholic beverage in the Philippines like the local craft beers. There are still many exciting and surprising things you can find and realize in beers. Other great craft brewery includes Great Island Craft Brewery in Paranaque and Pivo Praha in Makati City. You may not know this yet but you can check your internet or friends who love local craft beers as well. Katipunan Kraft Ales offer one of the best craft beers you have ever tasted, the Indio Pale Ale.

 Local Crafted beers can also be available on different favorite places in the Philippines where tourists and locals go on vacays. It is quite fascinating exploring new things and savoring fresh discoveries like the new taste of local craft beers. For those who have not yet experience beers on an exotic note, try one.  Local crafted beers are just as delightful as the many beautiful places in the Philippines.

To get listings on more alcoholic beverages in Metro Manila click the link.

Manila Microbreweries

Alcoholic beverages in the Philippines are easy to find, and none is as ubiquitous as beer. But microbreweries in Manila are difficult to find. Once upon a time Paulaner Brahaus existed at the Dusit Hotel. It is now called Fiesta San Miguel, which is anything but a microbrewery given that San Miguel is the largest beer operator in the Philippines. In Glorietta stood The Brewery, a stalwart in the ‘90s accompanying the Hard Rock Cafés heyday as the bar to see-and-be-seen in. Grappas Ristorante in Bel Air Village, Makati, stood its ground before finally capitulating to the non-demand for specialty beer then. Microbrewed beer is like the unicorn for alcoholic beverages in the Philippines and this list will help you go find the needle in the haystack that is microbrewed beer.

 
Pivo Praha Czech Microbrewery, part of the Bravo Best Foods branch in Makati, is one of the only commercial microbreweries you can find in Metro Manila. Pivo Praha means Prague beer and the microbrewery offers four type of pilsner: a classing, light, dark, and weizen (wheat beer).

 Bogsbrew hails from Bacolod in the Negros Occidental Province of the Western Visayas Region of the Philippines (apologies for sounding like a beauty queen introducing herself right there). The Negros Island Craft Beer company that makes this Bogsbrew is one of the first known craft microbreweries in the Philippines serving its beer commercially. The craft beer uses organic Negrense muscovado sugar (a specialty of the region) and pure spring water. The Primo version, a light adjunct lager of sorts, also by Bogsbrew lists malted barley, organic rice, corn, Negros Island muscovado sugar, wild bee honey, and natural mountain spring water as a few of its ingredients. You may find Bogsbrew in Manila at Penpen’s Filipino Kitchen, CAB Café, Ritual, Bob’s Restaurant as of now.

Katipunan Craft Ale’s Indio Pale Ale is a commercially available beer, brought to you by 4 young boys who decided to leave their corporate slavedrivers to become microbrewers of craft beer. If you want to try their beer on tap, then you’d have to reach them through social media and maybe they’ll let you visit their brewing setup. With plans to expand their business because of its popularity, it doesn’t seem like such a grand idea that you’d be able to taste their new beer experiments in their brewhouse and restaurant in the next few years. If you’re too shy to ask for a brewery visit via the social networks, then stock up on this soon-to-be-famous beer at Sa Kanto and Ritual.

 Another craft microbrewery to look out for is Great Islands Craft Brewery by Allan Baldis Agalda. His beer is already making waves in the close-knit and supportive craft beer community where he lets fellow beer geeks taste his experiments such as red chili beer, green chili beer, and a more daring Bicol Express Wild Chili Ale. He also creates other beers not involving chili such as an Imperial Red IPA and a few of the classic types that every hophead should love.

Filipino Beer - Guide and History

 

 

If you ask a Filipino what the local beer is, wherever you are, the answer will be San Miguel.  You can’t avoid it. The brand has been mass produced and burned into the psyche of generations of alcohol loving filipinos through countless hours of binge drinking and a very effective use of media.  San Miguel endorsers include musicians from the Apo Hiking Society to Apple D Ap, and famous personalities from Manny Pacquiao to Jet li.  This local beer has been brilliantly advertised by these endorsers as a staple of the Filipino Fiesta.  And as the saying goes, the Philippines has a fiesta for everyday of the year.

 

San Miguel has over 100 years of beer making history.  Starting out in the 1890’s, San Miguel Beer was first produced by La Fabrica de Cerveza de San Miguel.  It was only renamed San Miguel Corporation in 1963, when it branched out into food, packaging and other businesses while housing its brewery business under the San Miguel Beer Division. San Miguel Brewery Incorporated only came to be as we know it today in 2007.

 

San Miguel has an effective monopoly on the local beer industry.  It boasts of a market share of roughly 95% in the Philippines and also lays claim to the title of largest producer of beer in the archipelago.  It has a brand of beer to cater to the rainbow that is the sophisticated beer drinker’s palate.  It has the San Mig Light for the health conscious calorie counting casual beer drinker.  It has the Cervesa Negra for lovers of Dark Lagers.  It has the classic Pale Pilsen, a brew San Miguel says has been perfected specially for Filipinos.  It also has the strong brews of Red Horse and San Mig Strong Ice for drinkers who want to get drunk straight away.  And it has Gold Eagle Beer, a favorite in the provinces.  More recent offering include flavored beers in apple and lemon variants, and another low calorie beer that is still in product testing.

 

The only real competition to San Miguel, if you can even call it that, would be the offerings of Asia Brewery. Asia Brewery sells Manila Beer, and brands imported from abroad, Colt 45 and Coors Light.  It is sad that the Philippines has not fostered an environment similar to the local beer traditions of Germany, where almost every bar and tavern has their own brewery hidden within their cellars.  What the Philippines does have is a rich history of drinking.  Beer is the number one alcoholic beverage in the country.  It just so happens that everyone has been drinking the same beer for decades.  San Miguel has been so successful, that it has exported its products to neighboring countries, with some success.  The flagship Pale Pilsen is exported to over 40 countries around the world.  San Miguel Beers have also garnered international recognition, with gold awards from Monde Selection International, and Japanese brewer Kirin even purchased a stake in San Miguel Brewery.  It is the Filipino Local Beer gone global, embedded in the country’s history for the last 100 years.  By the looks of it, it can keep going for a 100 years more.

Beer, king of alcoholic beverages in the Philippines

Filipinos love them alcohol. Alcoholic beverages in the Philippines are creative and usually sweet. From the strong boozy taste of gin killed off by being poured into the sweet concoction of Pomelo (local grapefruit) juice, to the many cocktails created using native mangos and local rum, there are indeed many ways to enjoy alcohol in the Philippines. But something you can find everywhere and anywhere is beer. Here is a short guide to Philippine Beers.

 Amongst all alcoholic beverages in the Philippines, the Red Horse brand of beer, with its sweet-cereal taste, and antiseptic smell, is the most popular amongst all options. This is meant to be drunk when refrigerated thoroughly. Enjoyed by many, it is affordable and even comes in a liter bottle. If you’re lucky, you might find the bottle with the mythical happy horse on its logo, supposedly promising that the beer you’ve received is of a stronger variant.

 If Red Horse doesn’t quite do it for you, then you probably will be the man for the bitter-tasting San Miguel Pale Pilsen, arguably the drink of choice for many a father or brawny uncle in the Philippines. As stereotypes go, the San Miguel Pale Pilsen drinker has the sort of alcoholic equivalent of mystique that the Marlboro Man presents. This beer, with a good hoppy flavor, and decent head, can be found anywhere from the local roadside beer gardens in provinces to the top hotels in the country. A similar style would be the San Miguel Super Dry beer, a little harder to find but also well appreciated by many an educated beer drinker, good to accompany you through dinner.

 IF you’re just looking for something light to accompany you through your long night of partying, the San Miguel Light beer promises 0 calories, and none of that heaviness that you feel in your stomach that accompanies most wheat beers. Marketed using the sexiest and most popular local celebrities of the moment, this adjunct lager is also best served cold and will be enjoyed by people who enjoy the similarly styled Corona, Heineken, or Dos Equis beer.

 Now if you’re the kind of beer drinker that only partakes of this calorie-laden alcoholic beverage if it is prepared by Trappist monks in Belgium or small award-winning craft breweries in the US, fret not, as there are growing options for you all-around the Philippines –you just have to know where to look. A good place to find these handcrafted beers would be in Global Beer Exchange, owned by beer geek Jim Araneta, who sources Craft Beer from Japan and the US, while helping nurture local beer-making enthusiasts through monthly meetings with the Beer Club of Manila.

One of the local beers that is well-stocked at the Global Beer Exchange is by a local craft brewery called Katipunan Craft Ales. They brew a mean American Pale Ale beer that is slowly garnering the attention of beer connoisseurs everywhere.

 If you’re still under the notion that the choices for alcoholic beverages in the Philippines are limited, then, obviously, you don’t get out much.