The Best Beer Bars and Bottle Shops in Hong Kong

Our Top 11 Beer Bars

• 65 Peel: Brand new gastrobar with only locally brewed beers on tap. 65-65A Peel St., Central.
• Captain’s Bar:The Captain’s Bar at the Mandarin is a Central institution, and it’s also got a custom-brewed Young Master Ales beer—served in their distinctive pewter mugs.Mandarin Oriental, 5 Connaught Rd., Central, 2825-4006.
• Craft Brew & Co: Neighborhood craft beer bars with regularly rotating beers from all over. SoHo: 17 Old Bailey St., Central, 2885-0821. SYP: 36 High St., Sai Ying Pun, 2559-0498. K-Town: 27-31 Catchick St., Kennedy Town, 2246-8782.
• Kowloon Taproom: With 11 taps rotating every couple of weeks, this open-fronted bar is a sorely needed TST watering hole. G/F, Astoria Building, 24-38 Ashley Rd., Tsim Sha Tsui, 2861-0355.
• Little Beer Room: Does what it says on the tin: Diminutive and full of good beer, with 20 rotating craft beer taps. Shop 1, 15 Bridges St., Central, 2799-4899.
• The Globe: The big daddy of good beer in Hong Kong still has one of the best selections in town. Shop A, G/F, Garley Building, 45-53 Graham St., Central, 2543-1941.
• The Roundhouse: 25 craft beer taps, with a strong selection of local as well as international craft brews. The new Wan Chai outlet serves up Southern fried chicken too. The RoundHouse Taproom: 62 Peel St., Central, 2366-4880 The Roundhouse Chicken + Beer: 29 Amoy St., Wan Chai, 2866-3330.
• TAP — The Ale Project: Offers a wide range of Hong Kong beers, particularly Young Master brews.15 Hak Po St, Mong Kok, 2468-2010
• Tipping PointBrewing Co.: This gastropub and microbrewery rocks the experimental brews with a regularly changing roster of tipples. 79 Wyndham St., Central, 2868-2892 
• Trafalgar Brewing Company: This pub has four house beers, all brewed on-site. Shop 10, 1/F, Brim28, 28 Harbour Rd., Wan Chai, 3102-9438.
• WOFT: Not one, but two craft beer places in Mong Kok? Now you KNOW it’s getting popular. G/F, 7-8D Yim Po St., Mong Kok, 2116-1786.

Our 5 Favorite Bottle Shops

• The Bottle Shop: Longstanding Sai Kung beer joint. G/F, 114 Man Nin St., Sai Kung, 2791-1600.
• HK Brewcraft: Homebrew store that stocks everything you need to craft your own ale. Also sells beer and runs workshops. 4/F, 15 Cochrane Street, Central, 5925-2739.
• Craftissimo: Stocks craft beers from all over the world.Sheung Wan: Shop D, 22-24 Tai Ping Shan St., Sheung Wan, 6274-3130. TST: Shop 166, 1/F, Tsim Tsa Tsui East,, Peninsula Centre, Mody Rd, 6274-3130.
• The Tramline Liquor Co.: Mostly international beers, with a few Hong Kong brews too, including very limited-edition Young Master beers.78 Catchick St, Kennedy Town, 2387-1230.
• The Artist: Brewed-in-Belgium beer specially for the Artist, the selling point here is that you can customize the label with your own photos or images. Also does the same with chocolate. Offers next-day delivery. 7A, Genesis, 33-35 Wong Chuk Hang Rd., Wong Chuk Hang, 2658-8818, www.mrtheartist.com 

Zero to Hero: A History of Hong Kong Beer

From thirsty desert to a boozy oasis: In the short space of just four years, Hong Kong’s gone from lager-obsessed city to bubbling craft beer central. In the beginning, there was none. Or maybe just a handful: think bars serving craft beer like The Globe in SoHo, or the Hong Kong Brewhouse in Lan Kwai Fong. In terms of local brews, there was just Hong Kong Beer Co., which “was not so creative back then, they only made one generic lager,” says Jonathan So, the founder of Beertopia. The city’s craft beer festival has gone from some 1,200 visitors in its 2012 inaugural event at Western Market, to around 13,000 at last year’s event at the Central Harbourfront. 

A little later came the now-defunct Typhoon Brewery, a passion  project created by a Cathay pilot operating from Lantau Island, making British-style ales. But the opening of Young Master Ales, the revamp of  the Hong Kong Beer Co. and the launch of Beertopia—all within a year of  each other—sparked off a craft beer renaissance. Today there are more than 10 craft breweries in Hong Kong, from little homebrew setups to larger warehouse operations. 

“The local breweries are being embraced—they’re all doing very well, better than what anyone expected,” says So. “Obviously we don’t grow the hops and malts here, but people are trying to make beers with Hong Kong honey or chili or ginseng, which is pretty neat.”  What does So hope is next? “To see people realize there’s good beer out there other than mass market lagers: you don’t have to go to a specific branded ‘beer bar’ any more.” If doing our part means ordering another pint of brewed-in-Hong Kong beer, we’re on board.

Six (Almost) Interesting Beer Facts

Facts to impress or bore your friends with as you work your way through a pint or four.

• A pint of craft beer averages around 250 calories per pint, or 1/10th of your recommended daily caloric intake if you’re a man—and 1/8th of it if you’re a woman. Normal lager has fewer calories—but as craft beer is strong, you drink less of it, making it almost a healthy option.
• The strongest beer in the world is Snake Venom, made by Scots brewery Brewmeister. It clocks in at 67.5% ABV, or, “way too much.”
• Until 2013, beer was not considered alcohol in Russia. All drinks under 10% ABV were classified as “foodstuffs.”
• The Wat Pa Maha Chedi Kaew, also known as the Temple of a Million Bottles, is a Buddhist temple in northeast Thailand constructed from over 1.5 million empty Heineken and Chang beer bottles.
• About 40 percent of the world’s Guinness is brewed and sold in... Africa. 
• After physicist Neils Bohr won the 1922 Nobel Prize, Carlsberg gifted him a house right next to their brewery—with a pipeline running free beer straight into his home.