A Japanese-era company, a Taipei brewery and a monopoly.

Taiwan Beer, called Taipi for short at home, began under another name. In 1919, while Taiwan was under Japanese rule, the Takasago Malted Beer Company was set up by Konosuke Abe and other investors, among them figures from the Japanese wine trade, with capital of two million yen, according to a history published by the museum of Taiwan’s Ministry of Finance. The museum’s own text dates the company to 1920, while its photo captions, the brand’s website and the government magazine Taiwan Panorama all give 1919. The brewery stood in the Kamihito district of Taipei, and the museum says its main equipment came from Hawaii. Taiwan Panorama calls it Taiwan’s first beer production facility.

The beer was sold as Takasago Beer. English Wikipedia, citing the corporation’s own history and a 2004 government Panorama article, says it was first brewed in June 1920 as an ale, in light and dark versions. The investors had planned to export it, the museum says, but early results disappointed, so the company sold its beer in Taiwan instead, where it enjoyed tax exemptions.

The colonial government already ran a Monopoly Bureau, set up in 1901 for goods such as opium, salt and camphor, with tobacco added in 1905, English Wikipedia says, citing Taiwan Today and the Taipei Times. In 1922 a plan to bring liquor under the monopoly left beer out after importers of Japanese beer lobbied against it, the museum says. The beer monopoly came in July 1933; from then on, English Wikipedia says, the Monopoly Bureau bought Takasago’s beer in batches and resold it on the local market, while the company went on exporting some of its output.

A new name, rice in the mash and the end of the monopoly.

The name changed with the end of Japanese rule. After 1945 the Nationalist government’s Taiwan Provincial Monopoly Bureau took over the brewery, one of seven factories it took over, the Ministry of Finance museum says, and Takasago Beer became Taiwan Beer. In 2004 the corporation’s chairman, Morgan Hwang, told the Taipei Times the name had been in use since 1946; Chinese Wikipedia gives 1945. With the Japanese brewers gone, Taiwan Panorama reported in 2019, the government sent staff to Germany to buy brewer’s yeast and study brewing. In 1947 the monopoly passed to the Taiwan Tobacco and Wine Monopoly Bureau.

The recipe took on a local ingredient in the 1960s, when ponlai rice, Taiwan’s short-grain rice, was added to the brew, English Wikipedia says, citing Taiwan Today and Taiwan Panorama. In 1964, the Ministry of Finance museum says, the bureau began working with Dominion Breweries of New Zealand to adopt continuous fermentation, and sent three staff there to learn it. New breweries followed at Wuri in Taichung in 1966 and at Shanhua in Tainan in 1973, and canned beer arrived in 1975, the museum says. That year the Taipei plant was renamed the Jianguo Brewery, Taiwan Panorama says; it took its present name, the Taipei Brewery, in 2002.

Competition came late. Until 1987, when the market was opened to imports, Taiwan Beer held 99 percent of it, the Taipei Times reported in 2004. In July 2002, as Taiwan joined the World Trade Organization, the Monopoly Bureau was turned into a corporation, the Taiwan Tobacco and Liquor Corporation, or TTL. In April 2003 it launched Gold Medal, aimed at younger drinkers, the Taipei Times said; Taiwan Panorama reported that it uses more maltose and more ponlai rice than the original and became TTL’s best seller. Later came 18 Days, an unpasteurised draught beer, and fruit beers made with Irwin mangoes from Yujing, Golden Diamond pineapples from Guanmiao and Black Queen grapes from Erlin, the magazine said.

Design and documentation.

The seven brands in this group are all beer names from Asia: Tiger, Anchor, Beerlao, Bintang, Cobra, Kingfisher and Taiwan Beer. Asian beer brands in general sit at many different points in the trade, from names first brewed by a single local company to names that now belong to much larger brewing groups, and a single brand can be sold everywhere from a street stall to a supermarket shelf.

A beer brand’s identity is usually carried less by a single brew than by a label, a name and the occasion it promises, because the company behind the name may have changed hands, moved its brewing or grown far beyond the place where it started. That makes the questions behind each name worth asking plainly: who started it, who owns it now, and where its beer is actually brewed and packed.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time, where its beer is brewed and how its packaging has changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

A state-owned brewer, four breweries and a century of labels.

Taiwan Beer belongs to TTL, a state-owned company based in Taipei; Chinese Wikipedia says it is wholly owned by the Ministry of Finance. A privatisation planned for July 2004 was called off after strong opposition from employees, the Taipei Times reported that June. The company says the beer is brewed at four sites in Taiwan, at Taipei, Zhunan, Shanhua and Wuri, and that it is exported to markets including China, the United States, Japan, Korea and Australia. In 2004, the Taipei Times reported, China’s Taiwan Affairs Office said an application to register the Taiwan Beer name in China broke a rule against geographical names in trademarks, and TTL’s chairman said he believed there had been political interference.

On the shelf, the original beer, now called Classic, is sold in brown bottles with a green and white label, English Wikipedia says, citing Monde Selection entries, and Taiwan Panorama describes its can as having a blue-waves design. Gold Medal comes in green bottles and in cans that repeat its white, red and green label, and Premium in gold and white. TTL has also used celebrities in its advertising: the rock singer Wu Bai had been the brand’s public face since 1998, the Taipei Times reported in 2004, and that year TTL made special Gold Medal cans with sea monsters and the logo of the Ho-Hai-Yan Rock Festival, and hired 144 promoters in green-and-white uniforms.

The brand also uses its own past. The Taipei Brewery, the old Takasago site, was designated a historic site by the Taipei City Government in 2000, Taiwan Panorama says. For the brewery’s centenary in 2019, the magazine reported, TTL sold a gift box of three bottles: one with a samurai-themed Takasago Beer label from a century earlier, one with a retro label from about sixty years earlier, and a Taipei Blonde Ale with a cartoon baby gremlin and Taipei’s North Gate. The company says it has won Monde Selection awards every year since 1997.

For a design guide, Taiwan Beer shows how a lager first brewed by a Japanese-era company and sold for decades by a state monopoly came to carry the island’s own name on a green and white label. Compare Tsingtao, the Qingdao lager first brewed in 1903, and Uni-President, another Taiwanese food and drink name. For this guide we use label green, wave blue and medal red with a slab serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Taiwan Beer’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.