South Korea’s alcoholic beverage company Bae Sang Myun Brewery Company plans to make forays into foreign markets next year with its new rice beer R4.

The company last month developed rice beer R4, bottom fermented beer made from hops mixed with rice and yeast, unlike conventional beers made from barley malt and hops, according to the company. The company developed the beer to please not only palates of Korean but also those of some living outside the country, the company’s CEO Bae Young-ho said during a recent interview with the Maeil Business Newspaper.

R4 will first target drinkers in Asian countries with high rice consumption. Bae Sang Myun Brewery has recently signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with a company in China for local distribution of R4, Bae said. The company hopes to introduce the beer in the Chinese market in the first half of next year. It is also in talks with other companies in Japan, Hong Kong, Vietnam and Malaysia to export R4. As well it plans to lure consumers in European and South American countries.

With 5.8 percent alcohol, R4, currently sold in a 330 milliliter bottle, will be also delivered in a 500 milliliter bottle within this month. The beer is priced at 2,300 won ($1.97), almost double the price of other beers sold in Korea.

Since its first release in November, R4 has gained huge popularity in the counrty and is now available in convenience stores and hypermarkets like E-Mart Inc.

It took as many as seven years for the company to develop R4. Some beer products such as Tsingtao Brewery use rice as one of ingredients, but R4 is made only from rice and hops without barley. Bae said, “For the development of the beer, we used about 80,000 kilograms of rice in experiments over the past seven years.”

CEO Bae is the second son of Bae Sang-myun, the late chairman of Kook Soon Dang Co., and founded Bae Sang Myun Brewery Company in 1996. His elder brother Bae Joong-ho is the CEO of Kook Soon Dang. The brewery company rose to fame with medicinal wine Sansachun and is leading the local traditional alcoholic beverage market with a rice wine with live yeast called Slow City Makgeolli.

By Seo Jin-woo, Kim Jae-hoon

[ⓒ Pulse by Maeil Business Newspaper & mk.co.kr, All rights reserved]