Artisanal brews hopping in popularity

The same could be said for the overall craft beer market in China. Over in Beijing, Great Leaping Brewing is one of the best examples of this. When the brewery first opened in 2010, it sold just 600 liters of beer per week. Today, the brewery's new facility in Tianjin is able to produce 153,000 liters per week.

"Currently, the Beijing market alone has a dozen or so legitimate brands and breweries. There is room for a 1,000 percent increase in market size before we would see any evidence of stress on growth potential," says Great Leap Brewing's founder Carl Setzer.

According to various research reports, the majority of Chinese drinkers still consume primarily local commercial brews such as Snow and Tsingtao. Snow, which is produced by China Resources Breweries, was ranked the best-selling beer in the world in 2017 in a report by Bank of America Merill Lynch, with 101.2 million hectoliters sold that year.

However, the potential of the craft beer segment can be seen in the fact that while overall beer consumption has been decreasing, consumption of craft beer has actually been on the rise, notes Aamodt.