Shanghai Craft Beer Festival

The stars finally aligned allowing me to go to one of China’s craft beer festivals. I’ve lived in Shanghai for over two years and I’ve definitely been trying the local beers, which has probably been detrimental to my weight loss goals, but I’ve never gone to a craft beer festival, never ever. So this year when I received word on WeChat that there would be a two day beer festival and on one of those days I not only didn’t work, but didn’t work the day after, I bought a ticket.

The festival was at the Jing’An Kerry Centre, actually outside the centre in a plaza, which was a very posh location for a beer festival which tells you who their target audience was, well-off expats and locals. There was live music and food and despite the heatwave a good time was had by all those who attended. I know a few people in the local scene now and I made sure to try some of the non-Shanghai Chinese beers, the other thing I made sure to do was take a lot of pictures and post them to social media.

I don’t think I’ve ever posted so many pictures to Instagram in one day before, but I carefully staged beer and food photos, made sure to use copious hashtags, and undoubtably increased my #instafame. However I did not use #shanghaicraftbeerfestival which apparently was the unofficial event hashtag. Now in 2024, I am removing embedded Instagram photos as they do not seem to agree with WordPress’s latest edition and I want to keep my WordPress up-to-date.

I also posted the photos on WeChat. WeChat isn’t just for sharing pictures, I paid for most of my beers with WeChat wallet, which uses QR codes to make electronic transfers from my bank account to another person or business’s WeChat wallet. I still haven’t signed up for AliPay their biggest domestic electronic payment rival.

The good news about WeChat wallet is you don’t need to carry as much cash, the bad news is you probably spend more money if you don’t have to shell out actual bills to buy goods and services. I ate more than I intended and probably drank more than I intended too, but I left before 9pm. The next morning I woke up early and got to work on my “to-do” list which included this blog posting.

Tomorrow I get my CFA Level 2 exam score and despite all my studying I’m not too optimistic about my chances, it was a very hard exam in 2017. I probably should have done more networking at the festival and in general in Shanghai, but I’m not as outgoing as I used to be, I mainly talked to a couple people I’ve met previously at beer events, some remembered me, some familiar faces seem to forget meeting me, I guess I should be more aggressive in exchanging WeChat handles, then I likely wouldn’t be single or struggling to find a better job.

There are some fitness events coming up in Shanghai, adidas has had a big thing on in Xintiandi I probably should have gone to, but after yesterday’s excessive calorie consumption not only will I be going to the gym this morning, but I’m thinking I should check out China Throwdown, coverage of which is no longer online. It was basically an amateur boxing event, someone from my gym fought in it if I recall correctly.

Thanks to social media like Untappd I can easily list the beers and breweries I tried. I also scoured the Internet for other mentions of the event, not many were found this early the next morning. I’ve also included some Instagram photos below. If you were at the festival leave a comment below especially if you had a favourite beer or band. According to Untapped I tried:

• Mao Mat Lemongrass Lager by Boxing Cat
• Monkey’s Fist Imperial IPA by Slow Boat Brewery
• The Wall Builder Imperial Stout by Great Leap Brewing
• Ich Bin Ein Lictenhainer by Young Master Brewing
• Blonde on Blonde by Arrow Factory Brewing
• Pineapple Cake Pale Ale by Jing A and Taihu Brewing
• Temple Golden Ale by Goose Island Beer Co.
• Summer Solstice Bayberry Saison by The BREW

There is another beer festival coming up on the other side of the river, Chris from the BREW is encouraging me to attend. I really am trying to lean up and will have to finish this post after the gym, because blogging inside the Great Firewall is tough, especially if you want to integrate and incorporate blocked/banned/restricted social media such as Instagram, which is what all the sexy cool beer drinkers use, including theBrewGirl whom I discovered by Googling, alas in 2024 it too seems to have been taken over by domain squatters unless she developed a sudden passion for concrete.

It has been hard to scare up much coverage of this event online, I’ll update this post again when I find more coverage. I uploaded more beer photos to Flickr it is superior to Instagram if you have a blog, leave a comment proving otherwise below.

This entry was originaly posted on July 24th, 2017, it was last edited on May 10th, 2024 and is filed under: DIY, Hobbies, & Interests and tagged: Beer, Boxing Cat, Shanghai.