For Hong Kong craft brewery Young Master, canned highballs are just the beginning – the cocktail possibilities are endless, says founder

After years of building Young Master into one of Hong Kong’s most well-known craft breweries, Rohit Dugar is branching out with a new diffusion drinks line

The launch of ready-to-drink cocktails line HigherThan features three highballs, each with a distinctive Asian flavour profile – and there’s plenty more to come

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The founder of craft beer brewery Young Master has created a new ready-to-drink diffusion drinks line. Photo: HigherThan by Young Master

Published: 1:45pm, 28 May 2022Updated: 3:54pm, 28 May 2022

Can he do it? Yes, he can.

Rohit Dugar is the founder of pre-eminent Hong Kong craft brewery Young Master, a stalwart on the beer scene since its inception in 2013. Over the best part of a decade, the brand has stayed (mostly) in its lane by focusing hard on creating high-quality local brews, while pushing for innovation and collaboration within the city.

There have been peaks and troughs – in addition to opening a slew of venues including Second Draft (closed but due for a highly anticipated comeback in Causeway Bay on Hong Kong Island this July), pizza parlour Alvy’s and a gastropub in Singapore’s Chinatown, Dugar was forced to shut Goon Goon, their taproom in Shenzhen, southern China, after less than a year because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Covid-19 has seen a reckoning for most food and beverage businesses, Young Master included. In 2020, Dugar saw the industry struggle with Hong Kong’s new reality of bar closures and social-distancing restrictions. He reached out to Jay Khan, the founder of award-winning agave spirits bar Coa in Central, to see how he could help.

Rohit Dugar is the founder of pre-eminent craft brewery Young Master. Photo: Roy Issa

Coa’s first canned cocktail, the La Paloma de Oaxaca. Photo: Instagram/@ajitgurung

“We were all going through the same thing, but at least [Young Master] still had distribution channels and an online store, so we could still do something,” he recalls.