I can barely hear Chit speaking over the sound of the boat engine.

“I said, I used to drive, but this guy goes way faster!” Chit beams, his chiselled grin just visible in the moonlight reflecting off the Chao Phraya river as we traverse through the northern suburbs of Bangkok. It’s 10pm on a Sunday, we’re on a speedboat, and we’re not exactly sober.

We make it to a small jetty where Chit’s wife Ann Chareonsuk, brother Natthaporn Saiklao—both business partners of his—and most of his team are waiting. As we disembark, Ann smirks.

“I thought you boys would never make it out of the brewery at the rate you were going,” Ann says. “We need to eat!”

We pile into her car and head for a late dinner, where Chit and Ann treat their entire team to the meal. “We’re like a family here—well, a few of them are my actual family.”

He chuckles. A hallmark of Chit is ending every sentence with a confident laugh. This confidence is justified, too, because Chit—full name Wichit Saiklao—is a colonel in the Thai Army. He’s also widely recognised as the godfather of modern beer in Thailand.

***

Sitting at the edge of what can reasonably be called Bangkok, Koh Kret is a tiny residential island formed by one of the many meanders of the mighty Chao Phraya River. At its southernmost point, the Chao Phraya dominates downtown Bangkok, ferrying thousands of excitable tourists through vistas of iconic landmarks such as Wat Arun and The Grand Palace, before flowing into the Gulf of Thailand.

Few visitors make it out of this central area—the tourist boats certainly do not. Growing up on Koh Kret, water had always been part of Chit’s life. It was his way off the island and into the world, and is now the core component of the thing that takes up most of his life: Beer.

Chit’s brewing journey started in a fashion familiar to many. While studying in the USA in the mid-2000s, he drank in the hype of heavily-hopped American IPAs, and fell in love. He resolved to try and make them in Thailand, and enlisted his brother Natthaporn to help brew. Initially with the goal of making US-style beer to share with friends in retirement, in 2011 he managed to ship Mr. Beer equipment over to Thailand and began homebrewing.

On December 23rd, 2012, it was 18 degrees Celsius—a cold night by Bangkok standards. Chit and Natthaporn had been iterating on various brews and finally felt confident enough to share their beer with the world.

Despite Chit’s affection for hops, Natthaporn was convinced that the Thai water profile would lend itself perfectly to dark beer. Sitting outside on the Koh Kret deck housing their tiny brewkit, they invited 10 friends over for the official inauguration of Chit Beer, and to toast their first official release—a London porter.

From there on the challenge was stark. For much of the past 100 years, Thailand has had two major breweries: Boonrawd and Thai Bev, best known for their flagship lagers: Singha and Chang. Since the 1930s, both had been in thrall with the government and churned out mass-produced beer that suits much of Thailand’s climate (and resulting tourist trade,) but are cheaply made.

To ensure a market monopoly, Thailand’s 1950 Liquors Act stated that beer could only be produced in factories with a capacity of at least 1,000,000 litres per year, or a brewpub producing at least 100,000 litres per year, and for on-site sale only. These rules were tethered to a capital requirement of ฿10,000,000 (around £230,000) and ensured Thailand’s fledgling beer scene was kept small and under wraps. Any beer that appeared different was brewed by one of these two monoliths, or produced in neighbouring Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos (albeit often by Thai brewers) and imported back into Thailand.

Over the next seven years, Chit, Natthaporn and Ann worked hard to promote their beer. Chit used his prestigious military standing and contacts in the government to lobby for less stringent rules around brewing. Natthaporn refined his craft, experimenting with more creative beers. Ann took over the communications and marketing. They maintained the entire operation in an unofficial capacity, growing their brand by word of mouth and Facebook groups.

They were fined tens of thousands of baht on eight separate occasions, escaping further punishment for their illegal venture due to Chit’s unique placement at the cross-section of military prestige and love of beer. 2019 saw the launch of the Chit Beer brewing school, led by Natthaporn on Koh Kret, along with the subsequent opening of MITR Brewery, a space set up by a collective of beer loving investors and those in the homebrew and craft beer scene around the city.

““It’s 10pm on a Sunday, we’re on a speedboat, and we’re not exactly sober.””

This enabled expanded capacity for their own beers and hosted the brewing of their students’ beers. Meaning ‘friendship’ in Thai, MITR was kitted out with nearly 20 fermentation vessels that could each brew several hundred litres, aligning with Thailand’s legal minimum requirements for brewpub ‘on-site’ beer.

This concept of the collective allowed MITR to be successful, something born from the deep values of family and community, rather than competition and individuality, that pervade Thai culture. Interest was growing, progress was being made in administrative channels, and others in Thailand were catching on to the potential of what was to come.

This custom of collective support and mutual benefit extended itself to the emergence of Thai Spirit Industries (TSI). A huge factory in the Bangkok suburbs, it was set up by a conglomerate of wealthy local investors who were convinced they could entice brewing giant AB InBev to shift their East-Asian production of Budweiser and Hoegaarden from Vietnam to Thailand.

However, the deal fell through, leaving a vast facility that was converted by some of the original local investors to focus on spirits, and just before the Covid-19 pandemic there was a strategic shift to beer. TSI realised the potential given their capacity, and opened up to host hundreds of aspiring Thai brewers as a turnkey operation, all using the in-house kit, then applying their individual branding.

Alongside this, American expat and Cordon Bleu qualified chef Brian Bartusch had set up his own local project in the mid-2010’s. Known as Beervana Thailand, it became the first importer of foreign independent beer into Thailand. One of his first customers, Lee Shyue Chen, went on to become the CEO, and by 2017 Beervana was well-known within expat circles as the only place they could find beer from their home countries.

Together they launched a homebrew competition called The Brewing Project, with the winning beer brewed at Nomad brewery in Australia and imported back into Thailand, as all independent beer had to be at the time. It was won by a beer called Whale Pale Ale, brewed by Pattarapong Dejburam, a water chemist from northern Thailand who Brian and Lee didn’t know, and became wildly popular.

In 2019, The Brewing Project ran again and was won by a Thai Muslim brewer who presented their beer at the competition finals in a Darth Vader mask, noting that they had to remain anonymous on account of their religion forbidding them from brewing. Their Raven IPA was subsequently brewed at Anderson Valley brewery in California and again imported back into the country.

The Brewing Project had potential, but needed to take the next step: actually brewing in Thailand.

The momentum finally told, and in an emphatic way. At the start of 2023, the major shift that Chit and the hundreds of aspiring Thai brewers had been waiting for happened. The Thai government amended the Liquors Act, meaning breweries could finally operate with smaller batch sizes and with less capital requirement.

Critics suggest that the government enacted this change in a limited way to counteract a bill proposed by Taopiphop Limjittrakorn, a lawmaker from Thailand’s opposition party Move Forwards, and an ally of Chit’s and former homebrewer. This would have shifted things even more in favour of independent brewers, and surely garnered popularity for the party. Regardless, the changes enabled an unprecedented new horizon for Thai independent brewing to develop, and sparked a major growth in interest among young Thai people.

***

The TSI-affiliated Udomkati Brewing Academy is run by a set of beer aficionados, including academics, doctors and engineers. Nippich Snitwong, creative director and the face of Udomkati, comes from recent Thai brewing history; his family contributed to the creation of Federbrau, a German-inspired Thai beer brewed by Chang that was prevalent in the late 2000s.

Udomkati is especially notable for attracting a diverse clientele to its brewing courses, with a focus on gender inclusivity. Chayaphathra Sooklim, a yeast specialist with a degree in chemistry, had never considered a career in beer until recently. With the opening up of the independent beer world in Thailand, she shifted her attention to beer and has aspirations to become a brewer.

“I want to break boundaries for Thai women who want to brew beer,” Chaya says. “This was unthinkable for us even five years ago, and now if you look at the average course with Udomkati—it’s a lot of women.”

She believes that because independent beer culture in Thailand is so new, it hasn’t been associated with a particular gender. This means there is an opportunity for organic equality within the scene that is missing in other countries, where craft beer tessellates with the closed-minded perception that beer is a ‘man’s drink.’

The expansion of beer styles has also been prevalent. The Brewing Project released a lager, which was made sweeter than usual to suit the Thai palate, then released a witbier due to the familiarity of Hoegaarden in Thailand, and thus less subversion from what locals were used to.

““Brewing with local tastes and familiarity in mind, rather than just making what we think people should like, is a core part of our ethos.””

— Lee Shyue Chen, Beervana

“Brewing with local tastes and familiarity in mind, rather than just making what we think people should like, is a core part of our ethos,” Lee tells me while sipping a brut IPA, ironically not quite the Thai staple.

It’s not just brewing that has opened up, either. Brother-sister duo Sitthipun Pleumteeratham and Fluke Chanyaphat grew up in the centre of Bangkok in the 1990s and have quickly embraced the changes. They converted their childhood home into a craft beer bar, Tai Soon, with a state of the art cold storage and 18 taps, and in early 2024 opened their second bar, the aptly named Ministry of Beer.

The duo buy beer wholesale from TSI and distribute to other bars around the city that might not consider craft beer, then sell any excess stock cheaply from the corner shop their family has run for 25 years.

The shifts have been embraced outside of Bangkok, too. In Chiang Mai, the largest city in northern Thailand, British-Thai venture Sucking Stones Brewery opened in October 2024. Their biggest challenge so far has been brewing enough beer to keep up with demand; their location in the trendy Nimman neighbourhood has seen them become a go-to for locals after work, with hop-forward flagships proving as popular as familiar styles. Around the corner, the latest outpost of Chit Beer opened too, with both establishments seeing each other as contributing to Nimman becoming a destination for craft beer lovers.

The growth of the Thai beer scene could have been perceived as competition for Chit, yet he views it as quite the opposite.

“Humans want confidence they’re progressing, and can pass a certain threshold for their world to change,” he says. “We did that, and I want more Thai people to experience that feeling through the world of beer. Beer is an instrument—it creates community like nothing else.”

***

As it always has been, getting to Chit Beer on Koh Kret requires some effort, with trains, mopeds and boats all featured. Entirely outdoors, the taproom comprises two enormous covered decks overhanging the water teeming with people in high spirits, enjoying multiple bars and a live band. When I arrive on a sunny Sunday afternoon I join Natthaporn and Ann for a drink, watching as the speedboat ferries jovial punters back and forth every twenty minutes or so.

Suddenly, one arrival starts to turn heads.

As it draws into the jetty, there’s a clear presence about the man standing militarily upright, sporting a buzz-cut and a tight, dark polo shirt, almost Bond villain-like, gazing into the distance at the front of the boat. It’s Chit, who disembarks onto the deck and makes his way over to us, ensuring he stops to shake hands with every drinker he encounters, exchanging convivial words and laughter. He arrives at our table, plonks himself down, and despite having half a pint in front of me he yells over to the bar “get this man a beer!”

Surrounding the taproom are a multitude of local food stalls selling Pad Thai, Pad See Ew and Pad Kee Mao. “Thailand has a special connection with beer—we even have a dish that requires it!” Natthaporn tells me as we enjoy a hefty plate of drunken noodles, Pad Kee Mao is a spicy dish based around Thai basil and chilli peppers that pairs perfectly with cold beer, hence the name.

“My favourite of our beers is still the London porter—though have it after your noodles”, Natthaporn says as he hands me a lager. “That definitely isn’t the style they were thinking of when they named the dish.”

By the evening Chit is holding court, treating a selection of drinkers to stories and profound musings. “Beer itself can be bought. The government wants 100,000 litres a year, we brewed our ass off and ended up with 70,000. But we compete on our own terms, with community and relationships. The millionaires don’t have that time or that spirit.”

The hundreds of people enjoying the taproom tacitly appeared to agree.

The message among everyone involved in Thailand’s independent beer realm is that the sheer force of their collaborative and collective mentality is the driver of its success. Being able to source ingredients easily from Lisada (Thailand’s Amazon-esqe online marketplace) has added to the momentum, and as the number of those contract brewing at TSI and MITR continues to grow, the challenge will be to ensure the continuity of the community spirit.

““Humans want confidence they’re progressing, and can pass a certain threshold for their world to change.””

— Wichit Saiklao, Chit Beer

Potential challenges that some anticipate are a reintroduction of brewing restrictions at the hands of the macro-brewery lobbies, a crackdown on the still-technically-illegal homebrewing hobby, and the entry into the market of interlopers like BrewDog, which opened a Bangkok bar in July 2024. The overall feeling is one of positive anticipation, however—the community is passionate, talented, and unified.

On my next visit to Koh Kret, it is the 11th birthday of that first London porter, and the taproom is somehow even busier and more irrepressibly exuberant. 36 taps showcase brewers from both MITR and TSI, with many of them in attendance trying each other’s efforts. Chit and I are talking at the bar, and in between regular interruptions by well-wishers for his ‘birthday,’ he’s philosophical about the next phase.

“We have worked hard to get to this point. We led, cultivated new leaders, and I am confident we will lead again, even after 11 years. They are talking in the actual Thai Parliament about craft beer because of us!” He lets out his trademark chuckle, then turns to speak to an elderly woman sitting at the end of the bar, sorting through receipts, oblivious to the revelry ongoing around her. They engage deeply before she gives him a hug and he heads into the crowd. I ask the bartender who she is.

“That’s Chit’s mother. In Thailand, you can be the Godfather, but the real boss is still your mother!”

As the taproom empties at the end of the celebrations, various underage family members scamper around impatiently while I sit with the adults of the group awaiting the last boat back to the mainland. Chit asks me why I care about beer so much. I’m not expecting the question, and give a vague, tipsy answer about community and delicious flavours. I then ask him the same thing. He looks at me seriously, the first time I’d ever seen him talk without smiling.

“Without beer, would we ever have gotten the chance to meet?”

This feature was produced in part with the support of the mentorship scheme from the British Guild of Beer Writers. If you’re interested in finding out more about the Guild, click here.