Craft beer

Editor's note:

Shenzhen isn’t just about the hustle. Even though you might have to dig a little to find great nightlife in the city, when you do, you’re sure to strike gold. 

Boutique cocktail speakeasies are opening faster than you can muddle a mojito, the craft beer scene is growing, and the city boasts one of the hottest underground clubs in China.

China’s craft-beer revolution, which kicked off in Shanghai and Beijing around 2010, has much more recently found its way to Shenzhen. Brew pubs and specialist craft beer bars are popping up all over the city, and even regular bars and cafes are starting to add a couple of Chinese craft beers to their taps.

Bionic Brew (www.bionicbrew.com), launched in 2014 by a former employee of Beijing’s Great Leap Brewing, is a Shenzhen original. They brew pale ales, IPAs, wheat and black beers using

mostly imported hops and ingredients, but they do use domestic ingredients as well, such as rice in their Rice Rocket

Lager.

TAPS is another famous craft beer brand in Shenzhen. Its first store is located in a residential area in Nanshan, offering decent pale ales and stouts. It has branches in Coco Park Mall and Nantou Old City as well.

Another local brewing outfit worth your time is Craft Head (佳卡哈, Jiākǎhā), which, like Bionic Brew, also has a brew pub in an atmospheric urban village setting that feels a world away from Futian’s upscale CBD just a few kilometers away.