For a while this beer was bottled and sold by a guy in Seoul and I drank it every chance I got. Funny enough, I remember the bottles always looking a little scratched up. Turns out they were from China. Go figure.

Unfortunately, as this Yahoo! article details the Taedonggang beer is no longer sold outside North Korea.

North Korea’s quest to produce decent beer began in earnest in 2000 when it started talks with Britain’s Ushers brewery about acquiring its Trowbridge, Wiltshire plant that had ceased operations.

The North Koreans took apart the brewery that had been producing country ales for about 180 years, shipped it piece by piece to Pyongyang and reassembled it under the banner of its Taedonggang Beer Factory.

I used to drink this at a place called The Beer Market, a fairly lousy little bar in Busan. It was always on special and sold for about $6 for a large bottle. It has sentimental value because my (then girlfriend) wife and I spent a lot of time there in the early days of our courtship. I guess you could say a lot of our relationship was founded on the Kim Jong-il’s state beer.

Actually you can’t say that at all, I just wanted to write something self-referential before adding another quote.

But do not expect to see Taedonggang or any North Korean beer invading overseas markets any time soon.

North Korea may have solved the riddle of making a robust beer but it has not completely solved the problem of bottling it.

The brewery has occasional trouble sealing bottles properly and the glass it uses is fragile.

The transport system in North Korea is also a mess, making it unlikely that the beer can become one of the few legitimate exports from a country shunned by the developed world for its defiant pursuit of nuclear weapons and a human rights record cited by the United States as one of the world’s worst.

Distributor Park said he had to print labels in the South and send bottles from China in order to package the beer for export.

Even though he no longer sells the beer, he is still a fan.

“The taste is superb,” he said.

It’s a good beer, though I obviously haven’t had it in a couple years. A little on the sweet side, but with a nice aftertaste.

By the way the headline and photo is an homage to the TV show “Laverne and Shirley,” one of the great windows into socialism of our time. Sorry to feel the need to point that out…I think it’s a tad obscure for some.