Ugly Half shining through — Kiwi craft beer innovator making waves in Taiwan

Taiwan’s craft beer scene has been exploding in recent years, and Wellingtonian Max Gilbert is in the thick of it. In 2019, Gilbert and his American wife, Harn Sun, founded Ugly Half, a microbrewery and craft beer label in Wugu District on the outskirts of Taipei. Despite the pandemic and the couple being locked out of the island shortly after hitting the market, Ugly Half has quickly emerged as one of the darlings of Taiwan’s fashionable craft beer culture. Ron Hanson visited Gilbert at the brewery to discuss the idiosyncratic, award-winning label. 

In part one of a two-part series, Hanson hears about the story behind Ugly Half and Max Gilbert's journey from Wellington to Shanghai and Taiwan. You can find the second part of the story here.

Anyone with a nose to the ground in Taipei’s mushrooming café and bar scene will have noticed the distinctive artwork of the craft beer label Ugly Half. Whether eyeing a poster of its unmistakable logo, a charming, oddball smiley face with protruding buck teeth, or the psychedelic labels of its unique beer offerings, each featuring work by a commissioned artist, one senses Ugly Half’s growing presence. 

I asked Taichung craft beer pioneer Weng Yu-Chun, the founder of the taproom and beer festival ChangeX, about his impression of Ugly Half. “Their marketing strategy is fresh,” he told me, “and is expanding their customer base to become a new subculture. I believe it could create a new dimension of craft beer in Taiwan.” 

Ugly Half founders Max Gilbert and Harn Sun./ Image:supplied

Marketing aside, the beers, which are brewed mostly with New Zealand hops, also taste exceptionally good. Sitting down with Gilbert to discuss his unusual trajectory in Asia, I quenched my thirst with an Ugly Half Hazy IPA, whose equally hazy label of Taiwan’s misty mountain ranges was created by Taipei traditional glove puppetry master Chen Ming-Shan. 

My selection of beer was conservative. Ugly Half has some truly experimental and adventurous offerings. We’ll get to those in a moment, but first, I wanted to know what brought Gilbert to Taiwan. Perhaps, unsurprisingly, it wasn’t a direct route.

Beer of choice : Ugly Half Hazy IPA , complete with Chen Ming-Shan label / image supplied 

After dropping out of law school at Victoria University in Wellington and spending a year in Sydney working in hospitality, in 2007, Gilbert moved to China. “I mainly just wanted to do something really different,” he told me. “Australia wasn’t much of a shock to the system. China was the most different place I could think of. I ended up, by Chinese standards, in a relatively small town where I taught English for a year.” 

Returning to Wellington in 2008, Gilbert began a business degree at Victoria but also pursued a second degree in Chinese. As a budding beer aficionado, it was an exciting time to be in the capital.    “Yeah, it was a really cool time to be in Wellington,” Gilbert says, “when the craft beer scene was fledgling. Going to legendary spots like the Malt House and Hashigo Zake, being exposed to this new thing that was craft beer, Tuatara, Parrot Dog… Garage Project was then only doing big bottles. Early Beervana festivals only took up a fraction of the stadium space that they do today.” 

It was natural for Gilbert to become interested in craft beer. His passion for food and beer culture runs in the family. Gilbert’s younger step-sister Olivia Galletly is a food photographer whose work frequently appears in Dish magazine. Olivia also creates recipes which she publishes on her website The Hungry Cook. 

Gilbert’s older (by twelve days) step-sister Alice Galletly, whom he considers to be the true craft beer pioneer of the family, created her blog Beer for a Year in which she drank and wrote about a different beer every day for a year. Alice also authored the 2017 paperback, How to Have a Beer, part of Awa Press’ popular Ginger Series.   

Upon completing his studies at Victoria, Gilbert moved to Auckland to work for the import-export trading company New Zealand Trade Centre. Spurred by Gilbert’s interest in beer, the company began exporting New Zealand craft beer into Asia. They exported Tuatara to Hong Kong; 8 Wired, Yeastie Boys, and Tuatara to China; as well as 8 Wired and Parrotdog to Japan. 

In 2014, Gilbert relocated to Shanghai to represent the company on the ground while taking up a Confucius Institute scholarship to further his Chinese. “It was fantastic,” Gilbert says. “Looking back on it with friends, I feel like it was a golden age for foreigners in Shanghai. There were lots of people doing fun things, a really great expat community, and such a buzzing city.” 

In Shanghai, Gilbert went on to work for Anheuser-Busch InBev (ABI), the world’s largest beer company. “They have a separate division called ZX Ventures,” Gilbert says, “which is responsible for all the craft beer acquisitions. In some respects, it’s like a kind of venture capital wing where they invest in things and try to create new products. It’s where innovation and cutting-edge stuff is supposed to happen.” 

Where the magic happens : the Ugly Brewery/ image supplied

Gilbert joined the Shanghai office in 2016, not long after it was set up. Things grew quickly. “They went from around six people when I joined to 200 people when I left two years later,” he says. “I started out in trade marketing. I was involved in rebranding things they acquired, including a chain of Belgian beer bars. They started setting up taprooms and buying some local stuff. One of their big acquisitions was Goose Island. I was part of launching that in China.” 

But compared to the gradual evolution of craft beer culture in New Zealand and the US, to Gilbert, what was happening in Shanghai seemed a little forced. 

“It just felt a bit unnatural,” he says. “It was easy to say, ‘Hey, we’re giving you all this Budweiser. Why don’t you take a little craft beer on the side?’ It’s very easy to grandfather it in. But it wasn’t giving people a chance to really appreciate the product for what it is. It was more like this new trend that you’ve got to try. There wasn’t much depth to it.” 

In Shanghai, the ever-productive Gilbert also cooked on the side. Before joining ABI, he worked for the American business International Flavors & Fragrances. He started a small catering business and began doing various events. One night in 2015, while providing a Chef's Table at a friend’s restaurant, he was invited to a party. There he met Harn Sun, who would become both Gilbert’s wife and business partner. 

Sun, a Chinese American who had opened a series of restaurants in Shanghai, shared with Gilbert a love of food and beverages. The two decided to simultaneously start a family and a brewery. Out of their union came the idea for Ugly Half. 

I asked Gilbert about the name. “We were having a lot of conversations at the time about what was happening in China,” he says, “a lot of people pushing brands and trends, pushing things at face value. We wanted to make sure that we could also do well at face value and look good, but we wanted to have substance behind it. 

“And I think that’s where ‘Ugly Half’ came from. These days, everything is all about this pretty veneer. But where’s the ugly half? We’re dedicated to consistency and putting the hard yards in behind this nice and polished thing that shows up, but hopefully, it delivers on more than one front.” 

Ugly's 3rd Birthday celebration at Taipei's "Pure Lover Snack Dept" / image supplied 

The Chinese name for the label is You Gui (酉鬼). Local media reports here frequently discuss the name, which appears to resonate with Taiwanese and their vivacious love of puns. Combining the characters You and Gui creates the character for ‘ugly’ (醜). You Gui looks and sounds similar to jiu gui (酒鬼), a somewhat affectionate name for ‘drunkard,’ whose literal translation is ‘alcohol ghost.’ 

While searching for a location to launch Ugly Half, the couple quickly settled on Taiwan. “We decided on Taiwan pretty early on in the piece for a variety of reasons,” Gilbert says. “One was the competitiveness of the China market and all the big breweries chasing after it and the sense that the consumer wasn’t quite there yet.  

“And then you look at Taiwan. It’s very international. People in that 20-35 age bracket, a lot of them, have studied overseas and come back. It was attractive from that perspective. And personally, we always liked coming to Taiwan. We liked the vibe here. We liked the fact that food and drink are a big deal here, an important part of the culture. And we were looking to start a family and thought that Taipei would be a great place to do that.”

Read part two of Ugly Half's story, which covers the brewery's founding and rise in Taiwan.

- Asia Media Centre