Beers of Myanmar

I may be way out of line in making this claim and if so, I will happily be corrected. Nonetheless, I venture forth. I do declare that I have sampled no less than THREE beers which have not sullied the palate of my good friend Fil of the Czechlands, a man who has tasted more beers than anyone else I know, a man who has traversed continents in pursuit of an elusive new drop, a man who has diligently recorded the attributes of many thousands of beers. To the fund of common knowledge, I humbly present the following, available, I believe, only in Myanmar.

a) Myanmar Lager.

This is the standard Myanmar beer, available everywhere and bottled by the good ol’ Myanmar government. Hoppity hoppy lager. It’s the top-shelf beer in this country, being twice the price of the Mandalay Strong Ale and Lager. Much better cool than warm.

b) Mandalay Strong Ale.
This ale is reasonably punchy, I must say. 7% alcohol content, a little bitter, very pubby. It’s a little bit rough around the edges: a big gulp makes me wince and can bring tears to my eyes. Myanmar is a country in which you can legitimately lay claim to a hard-earned thirst after about thirty seconds. You can get it spotting a stupa, you can get it in a sun struck stupor, you can get it dodging a cow, matter of fact…etc etc. In such situations, I prescribe Mandalay Strong Ale!

c) Spirulina Beer.

The ads for Spirulina Beer show a glass full of dark green liquid. Fortunately this is not the case when it is poured out of the bottle. The beer is not undrinkable nor is it very good. The label declares that it is an anti-ageing drink which will help the drinker stay young forever, presumably due to the spirulina. I’ve given pretty short shrift to the health-giving claims made about spirulina. I think with Spirulina Beer, we have another snake oil situation and it’s all revealed in the fine print. This beer has 0.5% spirulina content and 5% alcohol content. That means there is TEN TIMES more alcohol in this beer than spirulina. If Myanmar had a Trade Practices Act with provisions about misleading claims, this would surely violate it. Hang on, there’s more fine print to be read. Spirulina Beer is brewed by the Myanmar Ministry of Industries and hence could probably claim to take you to the moon and back without getting into strife.

There are plenty of draught beers available as well – Dagon, ABC (‘An Easy Beer’), and my personal favourite, SKOL (‘It means Cheers.’). These are served in beer stations, sites of homosocial exchange if ever there were. Blokes, sitting around, drinking beer, smoking cheroots, chewing betel leaf, and apparently singing karaoke late at night. There’s definitely a ‘No Sheilas’ vibe to beer station culture. I didn’t see any women in the beer stations after about seven at night, and certainly no foreign women ALONE. This particular anti-patriarchal battle was one that I could not fight on my own. I did, however, spend a fairly boozy final night in Yangon in a beer station with a transient who I met on the bus. I was the only woman in the joint and nowhere was there a facility resembling a ladies’ loo or a loo that could be used by a lady. Had I the words ‘woman of extremely loose morals’ tattooed across my forehead in Burmese (don’t worry, Poppy, I don’t), I don’t think the looks and leers directed my way when we left would have been very different.