By Xu Jing (chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2007-08-11 23:47

'The Media Tour' visited the Tsingtao Brewery on August 11, and learnt the history and the development of the brewery.

The Beer Goddess is beckoning to the audians.

The brewery was founded in 1903 by German settlers in Qingdao, China. Since its introduction, Tsingtao® Beer has enjoyed impressive sales growth and has always been the number one beer in China.

In the early 1990s, the company was privatized, and in 1993 merged with three other breweries in Qingdao and was finally renamed Tsingtao Brewery Company Limited. Today 27% of the company is owned by Anheuser-Busch. The company now owns several other breweries in China, some of which also produce Tsingtao Beer.

It is known to all that Tsingtao beer has a pleasant aroma and a well-balanced taste. Its high-malty flavor and well-hopped character make Tsingtao a refreshing complement to any Chinese meal.

It is produced with spring water from Laoshan, a mountain area famous throughout China for the purity of its water. Tsingtao ingredients include the highest quality hops, as well as the finest yeast and barley imported from Australia and Canada.

Introduced to the United States in 1972, Tsingtao soon became the top-selling Chinese beer in the U.S. market and has maintained this leadership position ever since.

Tsingtao® Beer is brewed and bottled by the Tsingtao Brewery, the largest and most prestigious of the approximately 600 breweries operating in China. The Tsingtao Brewery itself has grown from four breweries in 1996 to 48 today. The Tsingtao brand is sold in more than 50 countries worldwide and accounts for more than 50 percent of China’s total beer exports. In fact, Tsingtao is the number-one branded consumer product exported from China.

In the bar of the brewery, journalists had a taste of fresh beer and interviewed the secretary of the company’s board chairman. According to her, the brewery’s new Olympic series beer won high public praise and owned a large scale of market.