Today is International Beer Day. Since 2013, this “holiday” has alway been celebrated on the first Friday in August. Prior to 2013, it was always celebrated on August 5.
I’ve often been asked what my favorite beer is — I’ve been to a lot places around the world and they all have their own unique beers, but choosing a favorite beer for me is easy — San Miguel. But it has to be San Miguel brewed in Manila, Philippines.
We lived fairly close to the San Miguel brewery in Manila, and they delivered the beer directly to our house. The labels were painted on the bottles and the bottles had to be returned… the brewery delivered more beer and picked up the empty bottles at our house weekly.
San Miguel beer in the Philippines had absolutely no preservatives. Based on knowing how many bottles they had and the amount of refills of those bottles, all the bottles were recycled every three to four weeks (when we were there in the early 70s) — hard to imagine beer being much “fresher.”
The history of San Miguel traces back to 1890, when a group of Spaniards decided to open a brewery in Manila — the first brewery in Southeast Asia.
San Miguel is available pretty much worldwide, but none of it tastes like the beer brewed in Manila. So, I’ll probably have a beer today to celebrate International Beer Day — and it may be good — it just won’t be as good as San Miguel from Manila.
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