Is Malaysia ready for a craft beer revolution?

Malaysian tastes are becoming more discerning and, as drinkers seek out better things to sip, the market is being gently guided towards craft beer. Jessica Mason reports.

PaperKite, a craft brewery in Kuala Lumpur, has noted how craft beer is answering a rising consumer demand for premium drinks in Malaysia.

In an exclusive interview with the drinks business, PaperKite Craft Beer founder Alvin Lim explained how “PaperKite is the first Malaysian craft beer brewery” and has grown over the past two years to now be in a position where it will be “distributed all over the nation.”

Lim explained: “We currently have four styles: a pale ale, an IPA, oatmeal style, and an English style bitter, which we call a copper ale, due to the colour and the hopes that it won’t put off a Malaysian drinker like the word ‘bitter’ does.”

Describing the journey, Lim said: “We have started with four very basic beers first, to try and help educate and teach people a bit, but our flagship beer really depends on the season, but people like the copper ale. We’ve only just started thinking about packaged beer, but we will start planning by the end of the year and then we will go into retail and into bars and be seen everywhere. We have to, because the minimum volume that we made is quite big, so we really need to sell it into both the on and the off trade. We think that 330ml will be the perfect size for packaged beer.”

Lim also insisted that the craft beer sector presents an opportunity, because “there are still a lot of people in Malaysia who don’t really know about craft beer” and explained that “back in the day, whisky was like that. Everybody was just drinking your Chivas, and Johnnie Walker Black Label and things like that. But now, people want nothing less than a single malt” and suggested that “the beer industry will head to that level, or at least very close to that level”.

What have Malaysians been drinking until now? Lim noted hat it has generally been mainstream beer brands owned by big corporations and not craft. He told db:: “Obviously want them to migrate from drinking the commercial beers, like Tiger, Heineken, Guinness and Carlsberg” but, he also observed how things were premiumising and noted that there were “more cocktail drinkers and coffee drinkers” now too because everyone is “becoming more discerning”.

Will the trend for craft beer brewed in Malaysia see PaperKite expanding to other markets? Lim mused: “Malaysia is still a new market for craft beer, and we are the first, so I think there will be more opportunities in our local market to explore first before we start looking further.”

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