Foam palace

Eating and drinking areas of the new Slow Boat flagship can seat up to 150 people. Photos provided to China Daily

Reflecting how China's craft-brew industry has matured, pioneering Slow Boat puts an impressive new face forward with its big new brewpub in Beijing, Mike Peters discovers.

I've got my face stuck in a Mushroom Brown. It's a dark and rich fungal ale, one of eight seasonal beers now emerging from the fermentation tanks at Slow Boat Brewery's new flagship pub.

But while I'm savoring the dark, rich fungal ale at the beery new operation in Beijing's Sanlitun area, the buzz online seems to be about ... the burgers?

"Sorry, Great Leap," one fan of both Beijing craft-beer pioneers writes on WeChat. "I think this is the burger I love best."

That cofounder Chandler Jurinka and his team have opened a three-story, 150-seat showcase for Slow Boat's popular beers and people are texting about the burgers shows just how far China's fresh-suds scene has come.

When the original Great Leap opened soon after the Beijing Olympics in a cold, drafty－and virtually empty－hutong, skeptics wondered if this was another foreign idea that Chinese would never embrace. Today, despite the prevalence of cheap bottled beer across the country, cities from Shenzhen to Harbin are boasting of their locally brewed beers. And while you might think such a crowd invites cut-throat competition, the craft brewers have evolved into something of a fraternity, selling each other's beers and teaming up for regular festivals. Prices can range from 30 yuan ($4.50) to 100 yuan per liter; take-away "growlers" are popular.