Beers in Indonesia

If you like a hearty lager beer with alot of hops, a full body, and a flavorful bouquet to quench your thirst and delight your palette; then Indonesia is NOT the place for you.

When it comes to beers, Indonesia is a barren dessert devoid of choices for the beer connoisseur or aficionado with discriminating tastes.  Saint Arnold or Saint Gambrinus (the patron Saints of beer) would frown down upon Indonesia ruefully.



In America (and elsewhere in Europe and the UK), the micro-brew or craft beer has become ubiquitous with independent labels and brewpubs popping up across the land.

For an epicurean, a bon vivant  or a beer "sommelier", Indonesia will leave you highly unsatiated.

The choices or mainstays in beer here are basically the drab or vapid local pilsners, Bintang and Anker with a few smatterings of imports such as Carlsberg, San Miguel and Heineken.  There is a micro-brew or craft beer wannabe in Bali (Storm) that makes a vain attempt at producing a few palatable varieties, but whose results fall well short of the mark.

I have yet to see or find the "King of Beers", American Budweiser here in Indonesia; nor is it served at the American Embassy Recreation Association (AERA), a/k/a The American Club. Sierra Nevada Pale Ale is available at the American Club however.

Here is what shopping for beer in Indonesia looks like:

Here is a picture below of the beer selection at an international type of market in Jakarta (as you can see, not much at all in the way of variety or choices - Budweiser is on top row so correction to what I said above about not finding it before in Jakarta):

Here is what shopping for beer looks like in the USA (pictured below).  There are entire super market size stores dedicated to the sale of of just beer, wine and other beverages. Total Wine & More (formerly Total Beverage) in Northern Virginia just outside Washington, DC (my home town) comes to mind. They carry over 2,500 different beers, from America‘s most popular beers to hard-to-find micro brews and imports. There are aisles upon aisles of beers to choose from (unlike the picture above from Indonesia with only a handful of choices and a couple small rows of choices).  It could take you well over an hour in there just to decide what beer to pick or try next. 

 

Apparently, the Indonesians are faint at heart when it comes to robust beers. There is also entirely too much Government restriction and tariff or taxation on imports.  

For extreme manly beers, see below for examples of brews that'll put hair on your chest (or take it off) as the case may be. LOL