Australian made craft beers have certainly gained popularity in recent years at trendy bars across Australia, and now it seems Asian craft beers are heading our way too. The founder of Asian Beer Online, Tim Brotherton, believes Japanese beers will make quite an impression with Aussie beer lovers, especially their latest brew Orion Premium Draft Beer. Dubbed as “the champagne of beers”, I spoke with Tim on his latest business venture.
How did you come up with the idea of Asian Beer Online? What made you want to start a company like this?
We just felt there was a niche opportunity for premium products, what we’re finding is a lot of people are onto this craft beer. A lot of people are just looking for things that are different from more well known beers such as Hahn Lager that’s been around for a long time. The varieties of wines out there are just incredible, and that’s the way beer’s going. We saw an opportunity where the quality of beer in Asia, especially Japan, is outstanding. We decided to import that, starting two years ago in kegs, and now with packages.
What made you decide to focus on Asian beers?
The other thing we have is an advantage. We import Japanese tap beer machines as well, been doing that for a number of years. The quality of those machines is remarkable. We started to import these systems and provide bars and restaurants with a free system, and then they would buy the keg beer from us. We’re sort of a bit of a match, we focused a lot of on Japanese restaurants and the Japanese with a big beer culture. That means we have over hundreds of Japanese restaurants we provide our tap beer systems to.
What do you think is the appeal to Australian beer enthusiasts of Japanese beers?
The feedback we keep getting is that Japanese beers don’t overpower. Australian beers like VB and Carlton are strong flavoured beers. The Japanese design their beers to go with food. The thing with Japanese beers is they enhance the flavour of the food, like if you try to have a fish or chicken for dinner. The Japanese are such perfectionists. I’ve been to a brewery in Okinawa. They way they make beer is absolutely immaculate, there’s no shortcuts and its the best quality. Orion is brewed on an island in Okinawa, made with a warm climate in mind. It goes well with a hot climate, has a nice taste profile. It’s only brewed in Japan, so you might find other Japanese beers that come to Australia that are made in China or Vietnam or Australia, and Orion is the only beer that’s exclusively made in Japan.
I’d imagine your job would require you to travel back and forth to Japan a lot. How often do you have to go overseas for business?
In total, my business partner and I go 4-6 times a year to talk to our suppliers. But they love coming to Australia, and we’re meeting with them later this week.
Tell us about Orion Premium Draft Beer. What type of taste does it have? What will people like about it?
It’s a lager style beer, it’s well balanced not too sweet or bitter, very drinkable beer. It captures a lot of things like the stronger ones such as Pale Ale, but you can only have one or two at the time. But with Orion you can have more and enjoy it. It’s a light style lager, full flavoured, 5% alcohol. It just goes really well with food. I used to have wine with dinner, but now I have orion.
What type of demand has Orion been getting so far?
Volumes are definitely growing. We’ve just started on package beer and city bottle shops. That’s starting to take off quite rapidly. Sales are good and increasing, and packaged beer doing extremely well.
If you’re keen on tasting some Orion for yourself, it can be purchased at Melbourne bars Nihonshu Sake Bar and The Grace Darling Hotel and restaurants Hooks On The Yarra and Oriental Tea House, Sydney bars The Dock, Mr Falcons, Chingalings, and York Lane, Brisbane restaurants Jeremy’s Bar And Bistro and IL Centro, or you can order it online at asianbeeronline.com.au.
Leave a Comment