It all began in the autumn of 2010 at the Great American Beer Festival, the largest, oldest craft beer festival and beer competition in the United States.
Being born and raised totally in Thailand, we experienced our true eye-opening moment about beer for the first time there. Imagine joining an event that served over 2,200 beers from 455 breweries when you are from a country with no more than 5 beers, and you will see. It was so impactful to us that we decided to go deeper and further into the beer universe.
Almost immediately after we got back to our dorm, we put up a mini DIY homebrew kit and gave it a shot. The resulting beer was barely drinkable but far from enjoyable. By the way, the beer was not the only thing we brewed up that day but also the idea – that anyone could definitely make their own beers. We knew at that very point that when we return to Thailand, we would brew our hometown beer and name it Chiang Mai Beer.
We returned to Thailand in 2012 and quickly continued our journey in homebrewing. Our brewing recipes improved gradually and one day we sensed that things were just right. Chiang Mai Beer was born – 100% handmade. Our early version of it was happily shared among friends and colleagues.
It was good, but being good was not good enough. We still wanted to make better ones. After we went through plenty of trials, errors, and small successes during all those years of experimentation, we were determined to legally commercialize ours.
We traveled across Southeast Asia and talked to many people in the trade in search of a brewery that would match our mission and vision. Finally, we signed a contract with one in Laos and a few months later, the first official batch of Chiang Mai Beer arrived in Thailand.
After a brief debut in our hometown, Chiang Mai province, we decided to expand our reach nationwide the following year by partnering with a trading company based in Bangkok.