Flowers Nanobrewery founder Yuki Aotani. Photo: Alexi Demetriadi

by ALEXI DEMETRIADI
AUGUST 7, 2020

Flowers Nanobrewery isn’t trying to break the Angkor monopoly on the Cambodian beer market, but the one-man, Japanese-run nanobrewery in Kampot is trying to preserve its distinct craft beer creations and identity

In Sihanoukville, Cambrew’s Angkor Brewery can produce up to 12 million hectolitres a year, the distinctive Angkor Wat silhouette adorning many a tap in the Kingdom. Snow Beer, the largest selling beer in the world, sells over 100 million hectolitres every year. Its owner SABMiller boasts that it can fill 12 Olympic sized swimming pools with the amount it sells, every day, for a year.

Nano in every sense of the word, the tiny craft brewery is run out of a collection of outhouses by Japanese-born Yuki Aotani. The brewing hut is a small self-made corrugated iron shed, the fermentation chamber a spare room; furnished with a bed, an extremely strong air-con and barrels of fermenting beer.

It would be a ‘moonshine’ party back in his native Tokyo that motivated Yuki to start brewing. “A friend was throwing a party and he had brewed all the beer himself,” remembered Yuki. “It was very good – I didn’t know that good beer could be brewed at home!”

“The first batch wasn’t great, it was actually very bad,” said Yuki. “I wasn’t sure of what I was doing at first.” Using his flat and his start-up home brewing kit Yuki started slowly, brewing a little over 10 batches during the first two years. “It is actually illegal to homebrew in Tokyo,” admitted Yuki.

From 2014 to 2018, the number of microbreweries in the Kingdom jumped from two to nine, with the number still growing. First on the scene was the Himawari Microbrewery in 2012, brewing out of the Himawari Hotel in Phnom Penh. Cerevisia Craft Brewery, run by American Erich Phillips, followed soon after in 2013 and operates a couple of venues across Phnom Penh.

“It had a good start, maybe too good a start,” said Yuki. Many restaurant owners were not too keen on Yuki’s mobile bar taking away their customers. “Some of them even called the police,” he remembers. “Another few complained, so I had to move the stall around town.” The constant moving and insecurity forced Yuki to turn off the ignition and head back to the brewery.

full.https://southeastasiaglobe.com/nano-brewery-cambodia/

Hops in PP is a nice local microbrew too. Cool beer garden.