啤酒 = pí jiǔ = beer A collection of Chinese beer labels 2001 and 2002

Jinchuan

Glossary

There are a few things you need to know if you have anything more than a passing interest.

• Beer in Chinese is written 啤酒 and referred to as "pijiu" (in pinyin) and pronounced something like "pee jee oh"
• Most Chinese beer is in the American Lager style and uses rice as a filler.  Beers like Budweiser and Pabst Blue Ribbon (two of the finest beers in the US) also use rice.  If you positively detest the concept of rice as a filler, you pretty much have to buy Becks, which is brewed in China under the strict German brewing rules.
• Most Chinese beer quotes alcohol content by weight (often shown as m/m).  Most other countries seem to use by volume (v/v) and I have adopted the "by volume" unit.  I have used a standard factor of 1.25 to convert alcohol by weight to alcohol by volume.  You can argue other figures if you like, but I would bet most Chinese beer in my list are rough guesses of alcohol % at best.  Figures of "3.5 to 4.5%" hardly inspire confidence.
• Chinese beers tend to prefer the Specific Gravity measure figure over alcohol % anyway.  The typical choices seem to be 10, 11 and 12º (degrees).  But these figures are only a rough guide.  For example, Heineken quotes alcohol at 5% by volume and 11.5º SG.  While Yinpu Black Beer quotes 4.2% by mass and 14º SG.  There are many 10º SG beers and I would classify them all as light beers.
• Typical beer ingredients are :

Funny Stories

You can't go through all of this without having a bit of a laugh.  For some reason, the laughs in China seemed more extreme.  My favourite is probably the Anhui Incident, perhaps one of the funniest events I have ever experienced.  I guess you had to be there.