Before creating the site Abudhabibeer i was living in Vietnam and started the beer blog Beervn.com in 2012. I was the first beer blogger in Vietnam and the first to write about craft beer. I was also running brewery tours a few times per month in Hanoi. The minibus had place for up to 15 people and we used to visit up to 5 breweries per night. Often one of the Goldmalts and then many of the others that brewed Czech styled beers at that time.

The blog got attention in local media since it was the first site about beer in Vietnam. In 2014 the book Beer guide to Vietnam was published with a guide to all the existing breweries at that time.

Beer tours in Hanoi 2012-2014

Hanoi had a couple of million inhabitants in 2012 but you could still move around town relatively quickly even with a minibus. Thanks to the brewery tours many people got to meet the brewers behind the beers and many small breweries that only had local customers, started to receive foreigners.

At the time of the writing of Beer guide to Vietnam there was about 50 microbreweries in the country with almost 25 in Hanoi. You had also the big players like Heineken, Sabeco and Habeco plus a few more. In 2023 there was almost 320 breweries listed in Vietnam. The craft beer history started slowly in 2014 and in 2016 there was already a handful craft breweries. Beer has always been very popular in Vietnam so it was the perfect place to introduce craft beer at.

Beer guide to Vietnam

The book was published in 2014 by me and the first to describe the Vietnamese beer scene with history and pictures from 2012-2014. To follow up and publish a complete new guide would take time but is still a dream to do.

After Vietnam

After living in Sweden for two years it was time to move to Burkina Faso and start the first craft brewery in the region. There was a few craft brewers in Hanoi in 2014 and some of their knowledge together with new formed the Brasserie Artisanale de Ouagadougou, (roughly translated to Ouagadougou Craft Brewery).

The beers had all local names such as Water of Volta IPA, Zone Du Bois Ale, Ouaga Dry Saison etc. The beers were sold at restaurant L Annexe that was run by two French chefs. After 2017 we move to Morocco and the brewery was closed. It was a small Nano brewery. Some of the beers are still listed on Untappd.

During a film screening in Ouagadougou arranged by the Swedish embassy in 2016, Brasserie Artisanale de Ouagadougou arranged a craft beer bar with 50 different kinds of beer, from lager to stout, tripples and ales.

Today there are some more craft brewers in Burkina Faso but still very, one Belgian styled craft brewery and one making lager, ale and ipa based on sorghum and barley malt. There is overall very few craft breweries in Africa. Around 200 in South Africa, five in Kenya and then thats it more or less. I had also a project to map all breweries and started the site www.beerafrica.com and did visit Kenya and Tunisia in the chase for craft beers.

The article published on Zurukenya after a visit in Nairobi in 2015.