Holiday in Cambodia redux

I believe I first learned about Cambodia having brewpubs from Fal Allen’s blog, which of course I read through in the course of my SE Asia research. I was intrigued. Five years ago I was through Cambodia and quite frankly I didn’t think much of it. Phnom Penh in particular really annoyed me. But it’s improved a lot, and not just because of the brewpubs. I hesitate to even count the second brewpub, Munich Beer, because the beer was pretty bad.

The city is a lot safer and more relaxed. You can walk five feet without getting hassled now. The streets are paved and it is safe to visit most districts at night. They’ve even paved the road to the Killing Fields at Choeng Ek. There is a greater variety of restaurants, the ethnic food scene in particular being awesome. Throughout Vietnam, we could barely find ethnic that wasn’t Italian. Here, in three days we rocked food from North Korea, Reunion and Myanmar. We hung out at a bar called Zeppelin, run by a returned Cambodian, who brought his extensive vinyl collection back from the West and spins nothing but great tunes. We even tracked down a beer bar, where we drank some nice German stuff like Schneider.

The first brewpub in Phnom Penh was Man Han Lou. It’s on a main drag far to the south side of the town, but was close to our hotel so that worked out well. They do four beers – a blonde, a green, a red and a black. Green? They basically take their blond and add spirulina extract to it, the same way innumerable American brewpubs create their enthralling raspberry ales. The difference of course is that there is some novelty value to an emerald green beer made with algae. It tasted fresh, in a seabreeze sort of way, and I quite liked it.

Their best beer was their stout. Cambodia is one of the dark lands, so the stout here is good. My favourite last time was Angkor Extra Stout, but this time it’s been less impressive. The best now is – and Beershine agrees – is Black Panther Stout. Klang Stout appears to be retired, but ABC is still on the market. Add to this Malaysian Guinness FES is now in Cambodia. This in addition to the regular swill.

There’s still a range of not so good swills available. A new brewery opened in 2008, Phnom Penh Brewery, with a pair of crappy brews. Another new brewery, Kingdom Brewery, is set to open on the northern outskirts of Phnom Penh in 2010. It should be interesting to see what happens in this market. It’s not a big market. The Khmer don’t drink a lot of beer. But money is beginning to flow into Cambodia, the country is starting to come into its own after the decades of strife, and I guess the influx of new beer reflects that.

Next week – the annual Oakes Awards! Will Franconia dominate?