Beer Styles

Tsingtao beer is a pale lager. By international standards, it falls into the International Pale Lager category, alongside Mexican and Japanese lagers. This means a golden-yellow, bottom-fermented beer with low hop character and a light, smooth body.

The difference from Pilsner lies in the bitterness. A German or Bohemian Pilsner often reaches 30 to 45 bitterness units and drinks with a crisp edge, while a lager in this category typically measures only 18 to 25 by international guidelines and tastes softer. Compared to Munich Helles, which is brewed entirely from malt, it often lacks the bready core that barley malt alone provides, but in exchange, the beer is drier.

In Chinese, beer is called pijiu, a word built from the English "beer" and the Chinese "jiu," meaning alcohol. Freshly poured draft beer is often called zhapi. Alongside its standard beer, the brewery also sells a beer under the name Tsingtao 1903, meant to commemorate the founding year.

This has little to do with craft beer. Anyone seeking variety in the glass should look to wheat beer, stout, or IPA; anyone wanting a thirst-quencher should look to this category. It's a style for hot summer days by the sea, one that divides opinion: connoisseurs find it too smooth, while others find it refreshing for exactly that reason. The figures in the profile come from the international style guidelines, not from any particular brand. Visitors to the Tsingtao Brewery Museum in Qingdao will find the brewery's history there. The standard Tsingtao beer itself has an alcohol content of 4.7 percent according to retailers, placing it well within this range.