Craft Beer: More Than Just a Consumer Trend

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Many view craft beer as a niche culture centred on individuality and distinctive taste. Yet long before the arrival of industrial lagers with their monotonous, watery profiles, brewing traditions and flavour profiles were inherently diverse. Beyond the flattening of taste, industrial beer has also stripped fermented foods of their natural microbial diversity. Alongside other industrially produced foods that chase “standardisation” and “sterility”, it is quietly eroding our innate immune resilience.

Craft brewing should never be reduced to a mere consumer pastime. In this episode, we welcome two guests from the brewing and baking worlds—Zhang Kai (Fenye Brewing) and Daxiang (Mars Elephant Lab)—to share their perspectives on craft brewing and baking, and the stories behind their work with fermentation.

Zhang Kai and Daxiang explain how they bridge brewing and baking, using the same grains to explore the possibilities of two distinct fermentation arts. They discuss the experimental spirit that drives them: from inoculating corn with sake koji, to the circular exchange between bread and craft beer, to how they brewed a batch of “eco-conscious” beer using energy-saving methods for Earth Day.

What exactly are craft brewing and artisan baking? Are they flavour-driven expressions, or a reimagination of the food system? Is localisation merely about “tracing raw ingredients”, or a more creative practice of food ecology? We also trace the evolution of craft beer, explore the intersection of flavour and culture, and examine the real-world challenges within China’s grain supply chain.

Whether you are a beer enthusiast, a baking fan, or a hands-on explorer of flavour, we invite you to press play on this episode and join us in contemplating the future of food through our palates.

EPISODE GUESTS

Zhang Kai

Brewer for Fenye Brewing and the Golden Orange Project. Through localised brewing initiatives, he advocates for a more sustainable form of hedonism.

 

 

 

 

Xu Xin

Co-founder of me lab Mars Elephant Lab and Grain Whisperer, and translator of the Chinese edition of The Details of Sourdough Bread. He focuses on the flavour logic from grain to table, weaving sustainable principles into everyday research and production.

 

 

 

EPISODE HOSTS

Wang Hao

Food Talk host

 

 

 

 

Xiao Jing

Food Talk host. Bread is a daily staple, with an occasional tipple on the side.

 

 

 

 

TIMESTAMPS

02:32 Craft brewing meets baking: the fermentation experiment behind the ‘Brown Bear Lager’

05:50 What exactly is craft beer? A technique or a culture? How does it differ from mainstream beer?

12:27 Why are ‘sweet, easy-drinking brews’ turning up so frequently in craft beer bars?

16:51 A circular loop between brewing and baking: can spent grain be turned into zero-sugar biscuits?

22:30 How to brew an ‘Earth Day beer’ from leftover bread collected across ten Beijing bakeries?

30:00 Beyond a single flavour: the unique character of craft beer born from ‘zero-waste ingredient cycles’

31:22 China’s craft brewing and baking sectors rely heavily on imports: where do local supply chains fall short?

37:33 Tomatoes, cocoa, honey… localising craft beer flavour profiles

44:31 Familiar with tea blends? It turns out malt grains are blended too.

45:07 Experimenting with freshly milled local wholemeal flour: for aroma and stability

48:26Climate change and declining grain yields: the cost challenges confronting craft breweries

57:30 The fermentation journey of malt: a reflection on flavour, land, and time

The fermentation of grain is a shared process between brewing and baking.
Wheat ‘pre-digested’ by koji mould has its starches broken down into sugars, facilitating fermentation and the release of complex flavours. It serves as the secret weapon behind craft beer and bread alike.
Root vegetables fermented with koji (left) alongside a comparative test of koji-treated barley (right).
Fenyi Brewing’s new facility in Zhuozhou, Hebei, is part brewery, part laboratory.
For every batch of ‘upcycled bread beer’, Xiang drives across Beijing, scouring the city to collect loaves.
Bread upcycled from over a dozen bakeries across Beijing is paired with residual hops from an IPA batch. Once dried, crushed, and fermented, the mixture produces a craft beer of unique character.
A pint of Earth Day-themed beer, built around the concept of ‘growing from waste’.
Venturing into the fields, Fenyi Brewing harvests wild yeast from the surfaces of plants at an organic farm in Baiyangdian.
Heirloom tomatoes sourced from farms on the outskirts of Beijing are among the ingredients Fenyi Brewing uses to craft beers with distinct flavour profiles.
Cocoa pods from Hainan also feature as a flavour component.

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Unless otherwise credited, all images are courtesy of this episode’s guest.

Podcast music: Banong

Production: Xiaojing

Editor: Yuyang

Contact email: xiaojing@foodthink.cn

Published by Foodthink