New trends in beer places

 

At the time of this writing, Korea is in love affairs with whisky and it is felt almost everywhere we go. We always had some kind of family gatherings on weekends, and last weekend we chose a beer hall (Kmbyul Maekju) as our meeting place. Unlike before, beer halls in Korea had tendency of having quite a lot of highball menus and corresponding side dishes. The picture below shows earl-grey highballs we had there.

According to the Korea Customs Service, there is significant increase in whiskey imports lately, the highest in 15 years. As a result, not only liquor companies and restaurants, but also convenience stores are releasing various highball products targeting customers.

During the Pandemic, due to the lockdown of most of establishments they used before, people developed habits of home drinking and drinking alone and a moderate amount of alcohol with carbonated drinks became suitable for such trend. This was the time when highball gained their popularity and it continued even after COVID-19 lockdown. 

There are many dishes that go well with highballs. Tteokbokki, which is nowadays very popular street food and boasts a good match with any drink, also is good for a cool highball over the throat. Shown here is spicy Tteokbokki with soup and dried sea weed roll stuffed with glassy noodle in it. Now, this type of Tteokbokki is increasingly becoming popular, but it may be too spicy for foreigners who did not have experiences with Korean cuisines before.

Highball goes well with seafood dishes too. Steamed clams, in the picture below, have a clean and light taste and are perfect to go with a glass of highball. Kmnbyul seems to have its own recipe, but these days, thanks to highball and whisky fever, there are meal kits that allow you to easily make clam dishes for your delightful party at home. You can buy them either in e-mart or nearby convenience stores.

Of course, as always the case, our Leo is more interested in what is going on in his online game than steamed clams no matter how delicious they are. 

In the previous posts, I mentioned that before the pandemic, highballs were, by most account, served in izakaya style bars only in Korea. It was because the highball boom was originally started in Japan. There, Japanese whiskey had been considered suitable for highball because it had a soft taste and reasonable price range.

According to Japanese sources, the growth of highball is coincided with the period called "lost 30 years." Highball, which is mixture of a small amount of whiskey with carbonated water, symbolizes one aspect of the collapse of the Japanese bubble economy.

In fact, in 1982, amid the unprecedented boom commonly called the bubble economy, Japan's whiskey sales also grew to the largest scale. Amid the economic boom, Japanese continued to love whiskey, and sales at that time peaked.

Then, the "whiskey," a symbol of economic boom, crashed with the collapse of Japan's bubble economy. In 2008, the Japanese whiskey market fell by more than 50%.

As Japanese who used to enjoy whiskey were unable to enjoy expensive whiskey due to the economic recession, Santori launched sales that recommended "Highball" with soda water in its whiskey or "Cocktail" style with ginger ale or coke in bourbon whiskey.

As a result, highball, which can be drunk with soda water mixed with whiskey, became a mainstream in Japan as customers could feel the satisfaction of whiskey at a low price. Another key factor drove popularity of highball was that most people could enjoy whisky with a lower alcohol content, softer taste, and cheaper price. This phenomenon eventually spilled over to neighboring country, Korea. Next time, I will try recently released off-the-shelf highball cans. 

 

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