Jonathan So
Founder of Beertopia Jonathan So was missing the beer festivals of his Canadian hometown when he realized he could just organize one of his own, right here in Hong Kong. The Torontonian tells Victoria Wong how he became a pioneer of the city’s craft beer movement.
A Boozy Start
I left Toronto when I was 18, lived in New York for a few years, and I’ve been in Hong Kong now for four-and-a-half years. I started Beertopia because I realized there was no craft beer festival in Hong Kong—and it wasn’t something I was used to. Not to say anything bad about the other festivals in Hong Kong, but having lived in North America for so long, I had other expectations. I went to this one beer festival in Hong Kong hoping to try new beer, only to discover that they were only serving two kinds of beers there—Lowenberg and Becks—over three-and-a-half weeks. I felt a bit disappointed, and I knew something needed to be done.
Risking It All
I had never done anything like it. I didn’t have any bar or event management experience, and I don’t throw parties. I wasn’t in the industry, so I started cold-calling people. I told them about my plan and set a really low price for them to get into the festival because I had no idea what was going to happen. I had to take all the risk and so did they—I was organizing a festival with no guaranteed return, and it was all built on faith.
It turned out really well: we were only hoping to get 1,000 people but had over 1,700 participants. I quit my job after last year’s festival—I was at a software company. No one in the industry knew about me when I first started. Now, I have a lot of people asking to participate, and I have a waitlist of vendors.
Better Beer
The main difference between commercially brewed beer and craft beer isn’t a difference in style, it’s the attitude: the people who brew beer are usually very passionate about it. Beer making is both an art and a science, but perhaps more science. Making beer is a rigid process; there’s a pretty set way of doing things, but there is a lot of trial and error that goes with it. The [process] is not written in stone anywhere; you have to figure it out for yourself. Experimenting is the art.
When I explain to people what craft beer is about, it’s not because I’m trying to be cool: I just want to let people know that there’s so much more to beer. You can easily go to 7-Eleven—because you’re never more than five minutes away from a 7-Eleven—and buy the commercial lagers there. So why go the extra mile? You’d make that extra effort when you realize there’s a whole spectrum to beers, and that there’s a difference between bad beer and good beer.
Maybe those aren’t the right words. What I mean is that there’s high-quality beer and low-quality beer. Good beer is subjective. I’m not here to tell you what is good or bad beer, and neither is the festival. Good beer is what you enjoy. If you enjoy drinking it, and it tastes good to you, it’s all that matters.
Not Just a Frothy Trend
People see this craft beer as a thing to do; it’s a fad, a trend and it’s hip right now. Though it’s becoming more popular, and perhaps it is trending, I don’t see this as a trend at all. I am hoping that craft beers will stay, and that they will be sold
in restaurants.
