Beer tasting in Beijing - day seven

Today's blog is written by grower Andrew Chitty from Williams.

Another early start to the day as we say goodbye to Japan where we have been treated so well and look forward with excitement the prospect of visiting china and the culture that comes with it. I'm also a little apprehensive about leaving the high standard of living that we have been used to in japan!

It is at Tokyo airport that we say goodbye to our new found friend and travel companion Ted, from Zennoh, who has been with us for the whole tour. We look forward to seeing Ted back in Western Australia in the near future. Thank you very much again Ted.

We arrive at Beijing airport around lunchtime where we meet Wallace Chang, who heads up the CBH head office in Hong Kong. We are treated to lunch in a Chinese banquet resturaunt inside the terminal, and are left in awe at the size of the airport.

We then catch a bus and head towards Yanzing brewery and Wallace tells us some facts about Beijing and China during the 40 minute trip.

Yanjing was actually the original name for Beijing. The population of the city is estimated to be 25 million people - more than Australia's entire population. The major problem facing the Chinese government is the huge rate of urbanisation, as 50 years ago 90% of people lived in rural areas, which has since declined to 40%. China now has lots of vacant farming land as the price of wheat was $280 for a tonne (offered by the government) was not sustainable due to the high cost of production.

The scale of the brewery and it's entrance was very impressive. We were taken into a large hall to watch a promotional video about the history of the brewery.

Yanjing's major claim to fame was sponsoring the Beijing Olympics in 2008 and most recently, the Chinese moon exploration project. The brand value is now estimated to be 13 billion yuan - in excess of $230 million Aussie dollars. There is advertising for Yanjing all over the city - in fact it was one of the first ads we saw at the airport!

We discovered that in 2002 china surpassed the USA for beer consumption and the state owned Yanjing now has 40 breweries operating in 18 provinces across China. The beer has received lots of awards over the years, particularly after listing on the Hong Kong stock exchange in 2001.

Yanjing has very modern production facilities utilising a German built plant. Their annual production is 1.2 million tonnes. We are shown a model of the Yanjing site, which is massive and covers 100 ha.

The brewery site has 8,000 staff from the total of 40,000 across China. The site is totally self sufficient including coal power generation, production of 1.2 million tonnes of cans per year and offering accommodation and recreation facilities for on-site workers.

Mainly Australian barley is used in the operation along with local yeast and hops from the northwest.

Boudin is used for Yanjing's top end beer which is 50% of production, it's also used for the medium quality beer which takes up another 30%. Buloke is also used for the middle end brew and the rest of Yanjing's production.

Yanjing has just received its first load of bass, however is a little concerned of the outcome as the taste and colour is harder to match to the Boudin variety.

Yeast is added at approx eight degrees and fermented for around 20 days. There are 80 fermenters at the plant, with each tank holding 40 tonne (40,000 litres or 5,000 cartons!) and producing 400,000 cartons of beer every 20 days.

We view the bottling and packing warehouse where we see conveyor belts and automated packing and labeling systems in action. These machines bottle 36,000 bottles per hour.

We find out it takes a total of 40 days to bottle the beer, including seven days in the malting process, and 20 days fermenting.

The final stop on the tour is the Yanjing bar, where we tasted the top end draft first. It has a clean crisp and light malt taste and is 3.2 % alcohol. We then managed to do lots of tastings and the Chinese tradition of bottoms up which is skull your glass which suited us all quite well!

During the tasting we were told that last year, China's beer production was 50 million tonnes, using 4.5 million tonne of grain - Yanjing produced six million tonne.

We then headed to dinner across the road at the brewery's research and development centre at around 5pm. By this stage we were already very merry and was a little concerned when we sat down to bottles of whiskey, which had been made with the barley left over from the beer production process.

Needless to say we poured ourselves onto the bus after dinner!!