Taedonggang Beer

The brewery that crossed continents

The story begins with a train journey. Kim Jong-il, travelling through Russia by rail, visited the Baltika brewery in St. Petersburg. The question he posed on departure — why can’t we make something like this? — set in motion one of the most extraordinary acquisitions in brewing history.

North Korea’s embassy in Switzerland contacted Uwe Oehms, a Bavarian broker specialising in second-hand brewery equipment. Oehms discovered that Ushers of Trowbridge, a brewery founded in 1824 in Wiltshire, had recently closed after its private equity owner chose pubs over production. The complete equipment — some forty large fermentation tanks, 20,000 kegs, bottling lines, laboratory instruments — was available for £1.5 million, though the full project cost reached an estimated 25 million Deutsche Marks.

Peter Ward, the director who arranged the sale, initially believed his buyers were South Korean. “When they first approached us I thought they were South Koreans and I was a bit shocked when I discovered they were from the Communist North,” he told Beers of the World Magazine. The UK government vetted the shipment for potential chemical weapons applications — fermentation shares similarities with biological agent production — but approved the sale as legitimate.

A team of Russian engineers arrived in Trowbridge to dismantle everything. Nick Crew, a Manchester mechanic, handled the logistics: thirty containers carrying approximately 2,000 tonnes departed from Avonmouth port near Bristol. Meanwhile, Gary Todd, the former Ushers head brewer, provided a five-month intensive training course to twelve North Korean delegates. “About 12 of them came at first — two engineers, two brewers, and the rest were Government officials, who were present during every conversation,” Todd recalled.

In Pyongyang, North Korean People’s Guard troops built the factory on a former cabbage field in Sadong District. They replicated the Ushers architectural layout precisely — the original Trowbridge plant had its brewhouse separated from the packaging facility by a public road, connected by an overhead pipe bridge. The Pyongyang version reproduced this separation identically, minus the road. Taedonggang Beer Factory began production in April 2002.

Thirteen varieties from a sealed country

The numbering system, modelled on Russia’s Baltika brewery, organises beers along a deliberate barley-to-rice gradient. No. 1 uses 100% barley malt at 4.5% ABV. No. 2 — the flagship — blends 70% barley with 30% white rice, producing what one reviewer called “a stand out lager — incredibly rich and malty, really rounded aromas.” No. 5, at the opposite extreme, uses 100% rice. Simon Cockerell, CEO of Koryo Tours, memorably called it “repulsive.” The brewery promotes it as “breaking the stereotype that beer must rely solely on barley malt.”

This gradient is not merely stylistic. It functions as a supply chain hedge. When barley is scarce — as it often is in a country that cannot reliably feed its people — production shifts toward rice-heavy variants. In July 2021, one month after Kim Jong Un declared a national food crisis, NK News documented 300,000 bottles of rice-based beer exported to China.

By 2025, the portfolio had expanded from seven to thirteen varieties. Nos. 9 through 13 include a standard lager, a fruit beer available in ten flavours, a wheat beer, an IPA, and a health beer incorporating buckwheat and birch sap. North Korea’s first IPA represents a striking alignment with global craft beer trends from one of the world’s most isolated countries.

Sanctions, pandemic, and the art of persistence

The festival came first. In August 2016, the first Pyongyang Taedonggang Beer Festival opened on the Taedong River banks, running nightly through September 9. Approximately 45,000 visitors attended — over 40,000 of them locals. All seven varieties were served on tap. State media explicitly framed the event as “an answer to anti-DPRK sanctions.”

Then the crises arrived in succession. The 2017 festival was cancelled three days before its planned opening — drought, geopolitical tensions, and the death of Otto Warmbier made the optics impossible. It has never been held again. That December, UN Security Council Resolution 2397 explicitly banned all DPRK food and agricultural exports, a category that unambiguously includes beer.

Yet Taedonggang adapted. A Chinese factory in Donggang, Liaoning Province, began producing Taedonggang No. 2 under apparent licence using North Korean technicians and smuggled hops. Products remained available on JD.com through proxy purchasers. The domestic market — sustained by grain from South Hwanghae Province, hops from Ryanggang Province, and groundwater from the Taedong River — never faltered. Beer delivery trucks maintained their classification as emergency vehicles, alongside children’s soy milk trucks, with priority road passage.

The COVID border closure proved more punishing than sanctions. North Korea sealed all borders in January 2020 and did not meaningfully reopen for three and a half years. Chinese exports to the DPRK plummeted 96%. Tourism — which had driven foreign visitor exposure to the brand — ceased entirely.

The brewery used the isolation productively. When borders reopened, Taedonggang emerged with an expanded portfolio, a massive new beer bar in Pyongyang’s Hwasong district (opened December 2024), and a rebranded export line called Pado (Wave), marketed on Chinese Douyin. In 2023, Kim Jong-un designated the brewery a top enterprise — a signal, in the DPRK’s political economy, that resource allocation would be prioritised.

The insult heard across the peninsula

Taedonggang’s most consequential moment came not from any government directive but from a single paragraph. In November 2012, The Economist’s Daniel Tudor wrote that “brewing remains just about the only useful activity at which North Korea beats the South.” The article triggered a national outcry in South Korea.

Tudor himself went on to co-found The Booth, one of Seoul’s first craft breweries. Hassan Haider, founder of Magpie Brewing, confirmed to Vice that the article was “the catalyst for the movement.” A state-owned brewery in the world’s most closed economy had, inadvertently, catalysed a consumer revolution in one of Asia’s most sophisticated markets.

A country of microbreweries

Beer accounts for just 5.1% of alcohol consumed in the DPRK, according to WHO data — soju dominates at 94.9%. Yet within that narrow market, Taedonggang faces more competition than its isolation might suggest.

Ponghak Beer (봉학맥주), in production since 1982, draws from natural spring water and targets the elite market with its Ponghak 11 and 12 variants. Ryongsong Beer (룡성맥주), affiliated with the Workers’ Party, produces stainless steel five-litre kegs specifically for the Kim family. Pyongyang Beer (평양맥주), founded in 1956, is the country’s oldest surviving brand. None approaches Taedonggang’s scale or variety range, but each serves a distinct niche in a market where distribution is as much political allocation as commercial logistics.

More striking is the microbrewery phenomenon. Unreliable power and chronic fuel shortages make centralised distribution impractical, so hotels, department stores, and even bowling alleys brew their own. The Yanggakdo Hotel, the Koryo Hotel, and the Golden Lane Bowling Alley all maintain in-house brewing operations. North Korean “steam beer” — brewed at higher temperatures without refrigeration — reinvents an American style out of pure necessity. As one Western visitor observed: “It is a country of microbreweries.”

For Pyongyang’s professional class, beer arrives through the rationed beer-card system — five litres monthly at 500 won per litre, distributed through their people’s unit. Those who cannot afford to drink often resell their cards. Professional vendors deliver sealed vinyl bags of draft beer to homes for 5,000–6,000 won per litre. It is a distribution system that no business school would design and no competitor could replicate.

Equipment, isolation, and what endures

The British equipment has now operated continuously for twenty-four years without access to original manufacturer parts, Western technicians, or replacement components. Gary Todd’s five-month training programme embedded deep equipment knowledge in the original North Korean team. Kim Chaek University of Technology provides ongoing research support. At least one documented instance of German engineers returning to clean draft lines improved quality dramatically — but the fundamental maintenance capability is domestic.

The brewery produces 200 kilolitres daily across its ten-hectare site, supplying Pyongyang’s network of beer halls, restaurants, and the rationed beer-card system that provides professional-class residents five litres monthly. Production has expanded from one variety at launch to thirteen on the same equipment base — evidence of considerable technical adaptation.

In 2019, four Taedonggang delegates attended the Mikkeller Beer Celebration in Copenhagen, producing a collaboration pale ale with one of the world’s most respected craft brewers. The appearance — facilitated over three years by Koryo Tours — placed Taedonggang alongside 105 international breweries. It remains the DPRK’s most significant engagement with the global craft beer community.

The original Ushers site in Trowbridge is now a Sainsbury’s supermarket and housing development. In September 2024, some sixty former employees reunited at the Grade I-listed Parade House for a Heritage Open Day marking the brewery’s 200th anniversary. The equipment they once operated continues to produce beer 8,500 kilometres away, in a country most of them have never visited and never will.

Last updated: April 5, 2026