Gweilo Beer to open Hong Kong’s biggest craft brewery to keep up with demand
Founders of start-up that began operating from a spare bedroom in 2015 decided to set up their own state-of-the-art brewery after demand for their beers outstripped supply
Hong Kong’s Gweilo Beer, which was set up 2½ years ago in a spare bedroom, will open a new US$5 million craft beer brewery – Hong Kong’s largest – next summer to cater to rising demand for the company’s brews. The brewery, a hi-tech 14,000 sq ft facility in Fo Tan, is currently under construction.
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Gweilo, founded by Ian and Emily Jebbitt, and their friend Joe Gould, currently contracts out production of its three beers to another Hong Kong brewery.
“We’ve now outgrown where we make our beer,” says Ian Jebbitt, an intellectual property lawyer, who began brewing beer at home with his father at the age of seven in Oxfordshire in the UK.
“Demand for Gweilo beer is seriously high and for the past year we’ve been at maximum capacity and can’t make any extra beer. We’ve always dreamed of having our own brewery and now we’re in a position to do that,” he says.
A casual chat with a friend and fellow home brewer from Mui Wo on Lantau Island, who works for his family’s construction company, BCI Engineering, led to the latest development, which will enable the company to produce 3,000 bottles of beer and 6,000 cans of beer every hour. Gweilo has also hired renowned US brewer Matthew Walsh.
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“When I came to Hong Kong as a lawyer in 2012 there was not a lot of local craft beer,” Jebbitt says. “At the time I joked to my wife that we should set up our own brewery.
