Craft Beer: More Than a Consumer Preference

Many people see craft beer as a niche culture that pursues individuality and unique taste. Yet before industrial beer—with its one-dimensional, watery flavour—arrived on the scene, brewing techniques and flavours had always been richly varied. Industrial beer did more than flatten taste; it also eroded the microbial diversity that fermented foods are meant to carry. Alongside other industrially produced foods chasing “standardisation” and “cleanliness,” it has been undermining the immune defences that protect us from disease.

Craft beer, then, should never have been limited to a consumer preference. On this episode, we invited two guests from the worlds of brewing and baking—Zhang Kai (Fenye Brewing) and Elephant (Mars Elephant Lab)—to discuss how they understand craft beer and artisan baking, and the stories that have unfolded between them and the art of fermentation.

Zhang Kai and Elephant shared with us how they bridge brewing and baking, using the same grain to explore the possibilities of two fermentation arts. They spoke about the experimental spirit behind their work—from inoculating corn with sake koji, to the material cycle between bread and craft beer, to how they brewed a batch of beer “with a sense of environmental mission” using energy-saving methods on Earth Day.

What exactly are craft beer and artisan baking? Are they flavour-driven expressions, or a reimagining of the food system? Is localisation merely “raw-material traceability,” or a more creative practice in food ecology? We also chatted about the development trajectory of craft beer, the collision of flavour and culture, and the practical challenges within the domestic grain supply chain.

In short, whether you are a beer enthusiast, a baking lover, or an action-oriented “flavour explorer,” we invite you to hit play on this episode and join us in thinking about the future of food—with our taste buds.

This Episode’s Guests

Zhang Kai

Brewer at Fenye Brewing and the Kumquat Project. Through local brewing projects, he advocates a more sustainable form of hedonism.

Xu Xin

Co-founder of me lab (Mars Elephant Lab) and Grain Whisperers; translator of the Chinese edition of The Details of Sourdough. Focused on the logic of flavour from grain origin to table, he integrates sustainability principles into everyday research and production.

This Episode’s Hosts

Wang Hao

“Food Talk” host

Xiaojing

“Food Talk” host who eats bread every single day—and enjoys a little tipple too

Timeline

02:32 Where Craft Beer Meets Baking: The Fermentation Experiment Behind the Brown Bear Lager

05:50 What Is Craft Beer? A Technique or a Culture? How Does It Differ from Regular Beer?

12:27 Why Are There More “Sweet Sippers” in Craft Beer Pubs?

16:51 The “Upstream-and-Downstream” Loop Between Beer and Bread: Spent Grain Can Actually Be Made into a Low-Sugar Biscuit?

22:30 How Do You Brew an “Earth Day Beer” Using Leftover Bread from Ten Beijing Bakeries?

30:00 Beer Is Not Just One Flavour: Craft Beer from a “Zero-Waste Ingredient Cycle” Has a Character of Its Own

31:22 Domestic craft beer and baking still depend on imported raw materials—what makes local ingredient supply so difficult?

37:33 Tomatoes, Cacao, Honey… Localising Craft Beer Flavours

44:31 You’ve heard of blended tea—but did you know wheat needs “blending” too?

45:07 Freshly milled local wholemeal flour: for aroma, and for stability

48:26 Global climate change and declining grain harvests: the cost challenges facing craft beer

57:30 The fermentation journey of wheat—on taste, land, and time

This Episode’s Guests

This Episode’s Hosts

Timeline

Published by Foodthink