With summer here, city seems to switch to lighter alcohol

GURGAON: Gurgaon is all set to give Bangalore a tough competition to become the beer hub of India. Adding to the list of already existing microbreweries in the city is the newly launched The Beer Café, India’s first “Pour-Your-Own-Beer (PYOB)” chain offering consumers 50 wildest varieties of beers from across the world.
The café, located at Ambience Mall, brings in a plethora of novelties for the city’s beer connoisseurs.All you need to do is enter the joint and pour your own ice-cold chilled beer directly from taps using your own radio-frequency identification (RFID) activated “beer card” valid across India.
“I want to be like Starbucks of beer in India. Unlike pubs and breweries which have a destination, we are a café that means people can come, enjoy a beer and go all day round,” said Rahul Singh, founder and managing director of the cafe, which was launched on March 17 with a 12-hour beer marathon.
“We have a beer for every week of the year,” he added. Besides a variety of European beers, Asian Laghers, Australia’s Victoria Bitter or Mexico’s range of Corona Beers, the café boasts of a variety of Belgian beers like Stella Artois, Hoegaarden, the original Belgian wheat beer, or abbey beers like Leffe Blonde, Erdinger, one of the best known German beers, and Chimay, the world’s best known trappist beer.
As Gurgaon is turning into a pub city, many entrepreneurs are chipping in their money creatively to lick the froth. There are seven microbreweries operating in Gurgaon at present and a few more are planning to open. Haryana is the first Indian state to have opened its doors to brewpubs, courtesy its new excise policy that allows microbreweries to operate for an additional annual licence fee.
Singh says Gurgaon is all set to be the next beer capital of India with increasing number of beer connoisseurs in the city. “Seventy five per cent of people who visit our pub prefer beer to hard drinks,” said Hemant Nautiyal, general manager of Striker pub & Brewery in Sector 43.
According to Singh, a major factor fuelling the beer culture in Gurgaon is the fact that corporates and youngsters in Gurgaon do not want to get drunk but relax after consuming alcohol.
“Beer is not hard liquor; it is a community drink to be enjoyed with friends or colleagues after work or otherwise. It’s a lighter drink with an alcohol content of not more than 6-7% in strong beers and 2-4% in lighter beers. So one can have two litres of beer and still get drunk,” he explained.
Youngsters also agree with Singh. “After a hard day’s work, I don’t want to be drunk but at the same time I want to de-stress and relax, and my way of doing so is having a quick beer with a colleague or sometimes even alone,” said Varun Joshi, working at an MNC in Gurgaon.
Interestingly, Singh has something to offer for beer lovers who find it difficult to spend money on liquor at the month end.
“One can buy beer bonds. Say when you have enough money at the beginning of the month, you can buy beer bonds and enjoy a drink without having to spend when you are broke,” said Singh. With a huge potential that the city holds for beer business, expansion plans are already on Singh’s mind.
“I will soon be opening two more such beer cafes in the city, one at Cyber Greens and the other at Sohna Road,” he said.
According to Jaswindar S Parmar, senior manager of Rockman’s Beer Island in Ambience Mall, people in and around Gurgaon were earlier not aware of fresh beer but now have gradually started to understand it. “Looking at the sales last year, we realized that beer is no longer just for summers, people enjoy it equally in winters,” he added.