TIGER BEER
Tiger Export
Asia, 5% ABV
This is a South East Asian premium lager beer from the home of the Singapore Sling, which, for the uninitiated, is a cocktail and not a weapon of mass destruction. Tiger Beer is well known to merchant seamen the world over and really should be mentioned alongside that other staple beer from that part of the world, Singha. Both are of a premium strength that creeps up on you before you can say ‘knock’ in a game of dominoes. Singha weighs in at a heavyweight strength of 6% ABV, while Tiger isn’t far behind behind at 5%. Tiger’s natural home in the UK is lurking in a Thai restaurant, as it is the perfect clean-tasting, complement to a green curry. Formerly only available in bottles, a draught variety arrived on these shores in 2008. Launched in 1932, Tiger is the flagship brand of the former Malayan Breweries Limited, now Asia Pacific Breweries. In the 50s, the Malay-based writer Anthony Burgess named his first novel Time for a Tiger after the beer’s long-standing advertising slogan. The first edition of the book depicted a bottle of Tiger Beer on the cover. After publication, Burgess asked Malayan Breweries for a complimentary Tiger Beer clock, but was refused. However, in 1970, when Burgess had become famous, Malayan Breweries told him he could drink any of their beers on the house when in Singapore. ‘But it was too late,’ Burgess wrote in his autobiography, ‘I had become wholly a gin man.’ MW
