Hopping Through Taipei’s Craft Beer Scene

Whether you want to zero in on a single Taiwanese brewery’s creations at their taproom or enjoy a selection of rotating brews at a craft beer specialty spot, Taipei has plenty of options to keep you hopping. Kick back with a refreshing draft or bottle, or grab a sampler flight to taste the variety.

Until recent decades, beer in Taiwan was typically consumed at banquets, stir-fry restaurants/beerhouses, or at home. But the practice of grabbing a happy-hour brew after work has been growing, especially with the explosion of the craft beer scene since around 2016. Ever since the state ended its monopoly on alcohol production in 2002, local microbreweries have been hard at work, often incorporating Taiwanese themes and ingredients.

Floating Taipei

As its name might suggest, this establishment in Taipei’s historic Dadaocheng area floats between the more commonly found bar formats in town. It’s a craft beer bar that offers an equally rich selection of specialty cocktails. Its decor exudes higher-end elegance at first glance, but the atmosphere is surprisingly casual and cozy. Baseball paraphernalia and large video screens also place it in sports bar territory. The food menu contains classic Taiwanese/international bar snacks but also enough specialty dishes that it could qualify as a bistro.

Co-founder Leo Wu formerly worked as a salesperson for an alcoholic beverage importer. While visiting bars in Taipei for the job, he noticed that few establishments provided both quality craft beer and creative cocktails. He wanted to create a space that bridged this gap so customers who didn’t enjoy beer could still find something they wanted to drink.

The spacious interior of the bar is visible through the stylish façade’s large display window, beckoning thirsty patrons as night falls. The Dadaocheng area was once Taipei’s most prosperous but fell into decline for many decades before its revival during the early 2010s as a cultural hotspot. Over just the past six or seven years, Dadaocheng went from being almost deserted at night to becoming a gathering spot with all sorts of specialty bars that pay homage to the area’s heritage.

Craft beer is still the main draw at Floating Taipei, with 18 ever-changing foreign and domestic selections on tap and around 100 brands available in cans and bottles. Wu says they started with mostly imported beers, but with the post-pandemic influx of foreign tourists to this charming neighborhood, they’ve added several Taiwanese brews as many visitors are curious about the local craft beer scene.

In addition to the mainstays of the joint, Floating Light’s Happy Yuzu Ale and UglyHalf’s Hoppy Cider, both local brews, the draft roster at the time of a recent Travel in Taiwan visit featured many offerings with intriguing ingredients – gose with starfruit and roselle varieties, a chai latte stout from Japan, an Australian smoothie sour with mango, strawberry, and guava, and a chili pickle sour from New Zealand. Several IPAs (Indian Pale Ale) from the US were also available. If such brews perhaps do not tickle your fancy, have a peek at the three fridges filled up with choices that are also available for takeaway.

The cocktail menu is divided into classics and signature creations, several of which feature Taiwanese flavors. Legacy of Atayal (the Atayal are one of Taiwan’s 16 officially recognized indigenous groups), for example, is concocted with rum, Earl Grey, green apple, and makauy – a mountain peppercorn widely used in indigenous cuisine. Beautiful Mistakes contains whiskey, oolong tea, and plum, a play on the word “oolong,” the Chinese characters for the term also meaning mix-up or misunderstanding.

Patrons can order finger foods such as nachos and fries to pair with the drinks, but for those who are hungrier, there are also spicy clams, crispy intestines, Thai-style squid, Hakka-style salted pork, and a “silk thread roll,” a classic fried soft bun drizzled with condensed milk and peanut powder.

Sports events are on occasion shown on the aforementioned screens, but they seem to exist more for the atmosphere, showing such images as colorful birds or a virtual “night walk” video through Tokyo. The place stays open until 2:30am on Saturday, which is relatively late in Taiwan for bars.

Floating Taipei | 漂浮台北
Tel: (02) 2550-0953
Add: No. 340, Nanjing W. Rd., Datong District, Taipei City
(台北市大同區南京西路340號)
Hours: 6pm~1:30am (until 2:30am on Sat; until 12am on Sun)
Facebook: www.facebook.com/floatingtp

MMO Craft Beer

This funky, open-seating space featuring iridescent metal walls, beige swimming pool tiles, and sauna benches offers a whimsical yet intimate space on a block in Taipei’s trendy East District dotted with hip restaurants and cafés. It’s a chill spot to grab one of their homemade beers for a before- or after-dinner drink, and there’s an enclosed room for those who want further respite from the city’s bustle. Owner Kevin Chu emphasizes the bar’s walk-in atmosphere, with patrons free to sit or stand anywhere without a designated table.

MMO has been in craft beer production for about two years. Chu and MMO’s brewmaster both trained in the US after seeing a niche in the local market, and as newcomers to the industry he says they’re less bound by established tastes and can brew more freely and expressively. About half of the menu consists of heavier flavors aimed at craft beer connoisseurs, such as their signature roasted, dark-chocolatey Black IPA made with six types of hops. Another favorite is the slightly sour, smoky Lichtenhainer – with bacon undertones – that’s low on bitterness. The other half features refreshing fruity brews that have more mass appeal, such as the crisp Passionfruit Gose in which 100% fruit juice is used, and the Cardamom Wheat featuring hints of citrus and mango.

MMO offers a single rotating non-alcoholic concoction; at the time of our visit, it was the roselle tea cold-brewed with Pacific Crest and Crystal hops. MMO also offers a variety of “comfort nibbles,” including its specially seasoned, deep-fried “kari kari” pasta, beef pie, and mini Margherita pizza.

Read from the side when tipsy, “MMO” resembles “330,” which is the bar’s address plate number as well as the standard volume of a beer bottle. The letters are arranged into different emojis on the bar/brewery’s logo to represent different flavors and post-imbibing moods.

MMO Craft Beer
Tel: (02) 2776 6360
Add: No. 330, Guangfu S. Rd., Daan District, Taipei City
(台北市大安區光復南路330號)
Hours: 4pm~12am
FB: www.facebook.com/mmocraftbeer

Learn Bar

If you’re having trouble deciding which of the 20 local draft beers to try, let the large XY graph above the bar here, with alcohol volume (ABV) and bitterness (IBU) as the variables, provide a starting point. There’s also a similar chart for the can and bottle selections.

Located close to the tourist hotspot Yongkang Street (go grab a drink while you most likely wait for your table at the famous Din Tai Fung dumpling restaurant), Learn Bar is Taiwanese through and through, from the interior decor to the beverage and food selections. Featuring retro-style ceramic tile floors, wooden tables, and traditional window grille decorations, the brightly lit space has a hint of the homey cafés found in almost any historic district around the island. It does open comparatively early at 3pm, but as night falls the lively atmosphere and screens showing sports matches reassure visitors that this is a drinking spot.

A map of Taiwan on the wall shows agricultural products found across the island that can be used as brewing ingredients, including Taichung’s wheat and Yilan’s winter melon, Changhua’s jasmine flower, Hualien’s white corn, Nantou’s smoked plum and coffee beans, and Taitung’s Ailanthus prickly ash. These ingredients may be found in the rotating selection of beers, all of which are brewed in Taiwan, and in the food.

The above-mentioned graph also includes customer favorites divided according to gender: at the time of our visit, the top brew for guys was the dry and aromatic Craft Never Die 18 Citra New England IPA by Taiwan Head Brewers, while gals favored the smooth, sweet-and-sour Jade Luminous Kumquat Beer by North Taiwan Brewery.

The food includes both Taiwanese and American-style fried morsels, grilled sausages, grilled water bamboo, boneless smoked chicken feet, and popcorn on the cob. Non-alcoholic beverages include malt drinks and homemade smoked plum juice.

Learn Bar | 學吧
Tel: (02) 2396-6818
Add: 1F, No. 253, Sec. 2, Xinyi Rd., Zhongzheng District, Taipei City
(台北市信中正區信義路二段253號1樓)
Hours: 3pm~11pm (until 12am on Fri and Sat)
FB: www.facebook.com/learnbartw

Zhangmen Brewery

This small, industrial-chic bar off Yongkang Street is not just any hole in the wall. Opened in 2015, it was the first tasting room for Zhangmen Brewery, now a stalwart of Taiwan’s craft beer scene. Beer line pipes run along the brick walls, adding to the raw decor style.

Founded by three engineers in 2014, the brewery today runs 11 bars and restaurants across Taiwan and in Hong Kong. “Zhangmen” refers to the leader of a martial arts school in wuxia novels and movies, and the founders hoped to foster a scene where Taiwan’s top breweries could, like a scene in The Legend of the Condor Heroes, show off their diverse skills in friendly but fierce competition.

The founders’ original intention was simply to design an automatic home-brewing machine, but things snowballed as they applied their scientific spirit to making their own craft beer. In 2016, they won their first gold medal in competition, at the Australian International Beer Awards – for Professor X, a smooth but slightly burnt imperial stout with deep-roasted coffee, chocolate, and caramel tones.

This beer remains a popular item at the Yongkang Branch taproom, and the staff recommends comparing it with other dark brews such as the Irish Stout and Black Citrus IPA, which also claimed gold at the Australian awards in 2021.

Another staff pick is the Mountain Mist, a fruity hazy IPA with distinct passion fruit and lychee aromas. The tea-infused beers are also popular, especially the Red Oolong Tea Beer, which uses specialty leaves from Taitung’s Luye Township. The brewing process reduces the bitterness of the leaves while releasing their ripe-fruit aroma. The Spice Beer with green and red peppercorns is also a standout.

For those who are hungry, the bar also has a substantial food menu with fried goodies, wings, Taiwanese braised items, and pizza.

Zhangmen Brewery / Yongkang Branch | 掌門精釀 / 永康店
Tel: (02) 2395-2366
Add: No. 10, Lane 4, Yongkang St., Da’an District, Taipei City
(台北市大安區永康街4巷10號)
Hours: Mon-Thu 4pm~12am; Fri 4pm~1am; Sat 2pm~1am; Sun 2pm~12am
Website: www.zhangmen.co
FB: www.facebook.com/zhangmenbrewery

Taihu Brewing

This outdoor, standing-only taproom in the heart of the ritzy Xinyi Commercial District has been a local fixture since late 2015 and remains a rarity for its setting in hot and humid Taiwan. Situated at ground level between two high-rise malls, the high wooden tables are packed even on weekday nights.

Launched in 2014, Taihu initially aimed to introduce through its taprooms a selection of local and imported brews to a drinking scene that had barely heard of the term “craft beer.” A first taproom called Landmark struggled at first, but the business soon picked up enough that management opened the second spot in Xinyi. As Taihu began making its own libations in 2016, Landmark Xinyi now mainly features in-house products with a few foreign brews.

Taihu means “Taiwan Tiger” in Chinese, symbolizing the Taiwanese spirit of pushing forward courageously. The logo features a tiger image inspired by the historic, anti-colonialist Republic of Formosa flag, surrounded by nine hops (“nine” is a homophone for “alcohol” in Chinese), inside a bottle gourd traditionally used to store alcohol.

The citrusy Taihu IPA is a must-try, as it was named the World’s Best American Style IPA at the 2023 World Beer Awards. The tasting notes state: “Pale gold with aromas of freshly cut grass, lemons, and spice. Light-bodied and crisp with notes of orange blossom, grape, white peach, and freshness. Delicious lingering finish.” The bestsellers at the time of our visit were the light and crisp Draft High Lager, the strong, citrusy Long Island Iced Beer, and the Moonlight Yuzu fruit beer, the latter two part of the brewery’s 9.99% alcohol series that’s also found in most convenience stores.

The bar also offers cocktails, margarita slushies, wines, hard liquor, and a variety of non-alcoholic specialties. A wide selection of pizzas is also available, with the Iberico chorizo being the most popular.

Taihu Brewing / Landmark Xinyi | 台虎啜飲室 / 信義
Tel: (02) 2722-0592
Add: 1F, No. 68, Sec. 5, Zhongxiao E. Rd., Xinyi District, Taipei City
(台北市信義區忠孝東路五段68號1樓)
Hours: Mon.-Thu. 5pm~11:30am; Fri. and Sat. 3pm~1:30am; Sun. 3pm~11:30am
Website: www.taihubrewing.com (Chinese)
FB: www.facebook.com/cysxinyi