From Guava Gose to TOASTea

The Creative Beers of Local Brewer Ugly Half

TEXT | JENNA LYNN CODY
PHOTOS | RAY CHANG

Tucked away in New Taipei City, Ugly Half Beer produces a unique brand of Taiwanese craft beer. Founders Max Gilbert and Harn Sun blend international brewing expertise with local ingredients and cultural references, resulting in innovative brews like Guava Gose and ToastTea. Let’s explore the world of Ugly Half and discover Taiwan’s exciting craft beer scene.

Just off a main thoroughfare through an industrial area in Wugu District, New Taipei City, a building with purple and yellow graffiti monsters stands out among the chockablock furniture wholesalers and factories. The purple one is holding a hop – as in the hops used to make beer – and looks a bit tipsy; the yellow one shows off purple and green teeth in a mischievous grin.

Behind these punk rock door gods, the brewers of Ugly Half Beer are busy creating seasonal and small-batch experimental beers with unexpected Taiwanese twists. The result is an innovative and often-changing lineup of beers that are as creative and full of local references as they are tasty.

Since Taiwan Beer – originally Takasago Beer – was first brewed in 1920, locally produced beer has been a staple of Taiwanese culture. Although the flagship light lager remains the nation’s bestselling brew, in recent years several Taiwan-based craft brewers such as Ugly Half have been experimenting with local ingredients and cultural connections.

Beer tasting room with view of production area

The founders of Ugly Half Beer, husband-and-wife team Max Gilbert and Harn Sun, built their business in Taiwan with intentionality supported by a wealth of experience. The couple, from New Zealand and the United States respectively, met in Shanghai, and their relocation to Taiwan was both a business and personal decision.

Max Gilbert, co-founder of Ugly Half Beer

“We always liked coming to Taiwan, and Harn has been coming here since she was a kid,” says Gilbert. “There was a pretty international community of youngish locals who would be open to the product, and a great food and beer scene overall…. We were starting a family as well, and Taiwan is a great place (for that).”

Both have extensive international backgrounds in food and beverage: Sun in hospitality and restaurants, and Gilbert in food and beer. They’ve brought in a wide range of talent, with experienced professionals from both New Zealand and the United Kingdom working alongside Taiwanese brewers.

“We bring an international understanding… but the personality of the brand is very Taiwanese,” Gilbert emphasizes. “You can’t do that with the material so much because hops don’t grow here, but one of our biggest (sellers) is Guava Gose – involving local guava, local wheat, and local coral reef salt.”

Ugly Half’s Guava Gose indeed combines local wheat and guava with coral reef salt from Houwan village in Pingtung County in a lactic acid fermentation; the final product has a unique and complex fruitiness balancing the sour and salt. Each bottle comes with a packet of plum powder – just as sliced guava is sold in Taiwanese market stalls – for creating a rim on the drinking glass.

This commitment to Taiwan shows in all of their core offerings. Their TOASTea is an amber lager with a “Taiwan breakfast shop concept.” It’s brewed with Assam black tea, and 5% of the malt content is replaced with bread crust from a local Mei Er Mei breakfast shop, resulting in a smooth caramel flavor with a hint of toast and sweet black tea, as the name implies.

From left to right: Guava Gose, TOASTea, Through The Mist I See The Fairyland, and Espresso Sour

Ugly Half also celebrates Taiwan through aesthetics – all but one of its label artists are Taiwanese, and their designs all draw on cultural touchstones. In addition to plum powder, the Guava Gose label, created by local artist Chen Kai-en, uses bright neons to evoke a fruit stand at a local night market. TOASTea comes packaged in a paper bag reminiscent of Taiwanese breakfast sandwiches.

Another core beer, a hazy IPA whimsically named Through The Mist I See The Fairyland, boasts a label created by celebrated Taiwanese puppetry artist Chen Mingshan. The design resembles the color-soaked backdrop for a local puppet theater troupe putting on a play about Penglai, a heavenly mountain in Chinese mythology. The mist surrounding Penglai is metaphorically tied to the idea of a “hazy” IPA.

The core beer selection at Ugly Half also includes their bestselling Hoppy Apple Cider, which balances the sweetness of apples with the bitterness of hops, and the Endless Summer Saison, a traditional Belgian-style saison that pairs well with food. Their offerings are rotated seasonally; one may find unique flavors such as Oyster Stout in cooler months. The Oyster Stout is made with calcium carbonate and amino acids from oysters harvested in coastal Chiayi County’s Dongshi Township.

“[The Oyster Stout] is a little briny, a bit of soy sauce… have that with raw oysters, if you can,” Gilbert suggests. “Guava Gose is the best overall food beer, a bit of a surprise, a dark horse. But great with a classic Taiwanese fried chicken. Sometimes you get pickles, like with Korean fried chicken; it kind of takes the place of the pickles.”

These core offerings are complemented by small-batch “R&D” beers. The purpose of the R&D series is to experiment – to try new things and see what works. One of their current offerings, an Espresso Sour, is available at select bars and restaurants in Taiwan. Fundamentally a sour beer, it combines the earthiness of espresso with tart, juicy pineapple, along with creamy coconut, providing a unique drinking experience.

With R&D, Gilbert says, Ugly Half is “trying to change the way people think about beer. The fine line between what people are used to and what’s new, and how to nudge people in a certain direction. [But] we don’t want to make any beer that we wouldn’t happily drink ourselves.”

Although Ugly Half tends not to distribute its products in supermarkets, they can be found in most establishments with a large or curated beer selection, especially in Taipei but also to some extent across Taiwan. These include most ABV Bar & Kitchen locations, Fake Sober in Taipei’s Xinyi District, and Highballers’ Bar near MRT Shuanglian Station.

Sun and Gilbert have faced their share of challenges, from delays in importing the necessary equipment to increases in the price of malt. “Beer like this is expensive to make in general,” Gilbert observes, noting that it’s difficult to “make something people can afford but still… [what] you want to make.”

Ultimately, however, all creative endeavors come with such challenges, some unique to the beer industry, some to all businesses, and some unique to a place. For Ugly Half, creativity is a core element of the duo’s purpose. “It’s an incredibly flexible beverage,” Gilbert remarks. “You can explore a range of styles – do you want to add fruit, do you want to add spices? (Do you want to) go in a vegetal direction, like green onion? Age in a barrel, (or) ferment spontaneously with whatever’s lurking in the air? You can do a million different things….”