Part two: The Wellingtonian making waves in Taiwan's craft beer scene

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 two of a two-part series, Hanson hears more about Ugly Half's impact and influence in Taiwan. Catch up on part one here. 

After a long and extensive search, Max Gilbert and his wife Harn Sun finally found their spot for the brewery, an old factory in Wugu just outside of Taipei. In Taiwan, brewing beer inside city limits is illegal, so all brewing must be done in industrial zones. But Gilbert is quick to point out that Wugu is a short drive from the centre of Taipei and is surrounded by residential areas. 

Max Gilbert outside brewery holding Hazy IPA｜Through the Mist I See the Fairyland Hazy IPA. Photo by Frankie Chang

At first, the big empty space of the factory was intimidating, but gradually the partners filled it up as the personality of Ugly Half began to take shape. The team bonded over the challenge of founding the label. 

“There were half a dozen of us working together in the malt room for six months,” Gilbert says, “because it was the only place with air conditioning. It was before we set up the upstairs. We became a tight-knit team surrounded by bags of malt.” 

The intention was to create a consumer-facing operation, and this May, Ugly Half will launch a bar on the premises. “I think it will be great to come to the brewery and have a beer,” Gilbert says, “and it’s made right here. That’s why we put in that window on the second floor. We want people to be able to look at the brewing operation, so it’s this cool experience. You can’t do that in too many places.” 

Gilbert and Sun appear to have a particular knack for hiring the right people and tapping into the local environment. The team has been mostly local Taiwanese, with a notable exception. For the first year and a half, Ugly Half’s head brewer was Tom Ashton, a New Zealand beermaker with more than a decades worth of experience and who has judged international beer competitions throughout Asia and Oceania. Ashton had been brewing in Shanghai for the previous five years and decided to make the trip with Gilbert and Sun over to Taiwan.  

Since its opening, Ugly Half has been making a splash in Taiwan's growing craft beer scene. Photo by Frankie Chang.

“Tom was keen to be part of something new,” Gilbert says, “where he could really put his stamp on it right from the beginning. He brought over technical beer knowledge and was instrumental in setting up the facility. Tom got us started, developed excellent early recipes, and set high standards. His most enduring legacy is that we are sticklers for quality control because he was extremely insistent on quality.” 

Another key hire was Taiwanese designer Tsan Yu Yin, who became head of creative and was instrumental in developing the early personality of the brand and initiating artist collaborations. Tsan, who worked for Ugly Half until August 2021, had also been living in Shanghai and decided to relocate for the project.“They provided me with a great freedom to trail-blaze the local craft beer market,” he told me. “It’s very hard for a graphics guy to say no.”     

I asked Tsan why he thinks Ugly Half has been able to connect so swiftly with the zeitgeist of Taiwanese subculture. “As we all know, Ugly Half was born mixed,” he says. “We can never blend in as a purebred local similar to what other breweries may claim, and neither should we. 

“Instead, a fun ‘identity crisis’ is something I believe, as a brand director, that we should celebrate by nature. It is the ‘bit of everything’ that accommodates all the possibilities that only our team of halves could carry out — the beers brewed with a Kiwi mind, tuned with a Taiwanese tone, and set to sail along the Pacific Rim.” 

In early 2019, Ugly Half held a huge launch event at the brewery that was attended by more than 700 people. The label organized buses to transport people from Taipei Main Station, closed the street, and arranged food trucks. The event was held during the weekend when the other neighboring factories were closed. The team set up a stage in the middle of the brewing area where musicians and DJs performed. 

Ugly Half's brewery has been the site of several events, especially as gatherings picked up post-Covid. Supplied/Ugly Half

“In the first year, we did a lot of events,” Gilbert says. “We feel that we’re doing something that’s pretty new to Taiwan, and the best way to do that is to work closely with bars and restaurants to introduce the product. The great thing about craft beer is that it’s not so pigeonholed. It can play in a lot of different areas. It can be involved in art. It can be involved in music. It’s this little platform where you can do fun, creative stuff.” 

Ugly Half’s first year of operating was exhilarating, but 2020 would bring a new, unforeseen challenge. In January of that year, during the lunar new year break, Gilbert and Sun were in the US visiting Harn’s family when news of an emerging virus in China began to spread. 

“People were saying something’s happening,” Gilbert says, “and then suddenly, everything kicked off. We were worried about traveling. There was a real element of the unknown at the start. And then Taiwan changed all the rules, and with the visa I had at the time, I couldn’t get back in. 

“It was just after we’d launched. We’d just released our third beer. It’s seven in the morning here and seven at night over there. So there were a lot of late-night phone calls, talking to people, trying to keep on top of it. We couldn’t have managed it without such a fantastic team on the ground.” 

Ugly Half launched in 2019. Photo by Frankie Chang

Several months later, Gilbert and Sun were able to return to the then extremely isolated island. “Taiwan closed down to people from the outside, but things were pretty normal on the inside. But then, when Covid finally did get in, it ruined the last two summers. We were experiencing about a quarter of the sales we were seeing beforehand because no one was going to bars, and that’s where most of our business is. Now, we’re getting back to where we probably should have been.” 

But Ugly Half has continued to develop and grow. Its beers and packaging are now gaining international renown. In 2021, Ugly Half’s Oyster Stout won a gold medal at the Australian International Beer Awards, the world’s largest annual beer competition. The following year, its Jumbo Sour won gold in the same competition. 

Ugly Half and Tsan Yu Yin have also won multiple awards for packaging design, including the Design for Good Winner award for its innovative TOASTea Lager at the prestigious Dieline Awards 2022 in Boston. Ugly Half’s Oyster Stout Trio was the Top Score Winner at Topawards Asia in Tokyo that same year. 

The label now sells six core beverages as well as two seasonal offerings. But Ugly Half’s commitment to experimentation is sustained through its R&D series, allowing the brew team to take risks and play around with often wacky concepts. 

There have thus far been 63 unique brews. The series of exotic beverages includes a milkshake IPA; yuzu citrus lager; piña colada pale ale; apricot, peach citrus wheat beer; and a green chili pine IPA. Within the R&D series, a Kiwi subseries focuses on exploring the full potential of New Zealand hops. 

Artwork of labels for Ugly Half's R&D brews. Photo by Frankie Chang.

“These hops are very well regarded,” Gilbert says, “and the team loves to play around with them. It’s a chance to show off those flavors and let the hops be the star of the show.” 

Previously, R&D brews were only available via kegs but are now bottled. Gilbert says the more beer-focused bars and restaurants sell them. “Everyone loves having something new,” he says. That’s one of the cool things about craft beer. There’s a relatively quick turnaround cycle. Within a month, you can have a new product. We manage the risk because we keep the volume low, but we can take some chances.” 

Ugly Half also maintains distinctly Taiwanese characteristics. These include using local ingredients such as Taiwanese fruits, coral reef salts, oysters, and wheat. Ugly Half’s Guava Gose is made from the Taiwanese fruit paired with the sour plum powder that slices of guava come served with at night markets. 

The approach also extends to design, packaging, and conceptualizing the beers. The best example of this, Gilbert says, is Ugly Half’s TOASTea Lager. The brew is inspired by the quintessential Taiwanese experience of purchasing sandwiches to go from the island’s ubiquitous breakfast shops. These cheap sandwiches come in grease-proof paper bags adorned with quirky illustrations of zany characters. 

But the sandwiches also create considerable waste in the form of bread crusts. Ugly Half seeks to reduce this waste by collecting crusts from nearby breakfast shops. These are then used to brew a distinctive amber lager infused with black tea, the kind of which is often drunk as an accompaniment to these sandwiches. Ugly Half describes this brew as “breakfast in a bottle.” 

The beer labels are made from the same crinkle-cut paper used to make the sandwich baggies, utilizing the same typography. Tsan Yu Yin commissioned illustrator Hai-Hsin Huang to create a new series of new characters for the labels. These illustrations are also featured on Ugly Half’s Toasted Tote Bags, which are made entirely from recycled plastic bags and grain waste from brewing of the lager.     

Ugly Half's TOASTea lager inspired by the breakfast sandwiches found around Taiwan. Supplied/Ugly Half

Moving beyond Covid, Ugly Half is entering an exciting new phase. As Gilbert took me for a personal tour of the brewery, I sensed his infectious enthusiasm and passion for the project. The Ugly Half team now comprises twelve members, and Gilbert is also enjoying family life with two young children. He is optimistic about the Taiwanese craft beer market’s potential for growth. 

Independent brewing in Taiwan got off to a slow start. Prior to 2002, there was a government monopoly on alcohol production. The state-owned brewer Taiwan Beer’s low-flavour domestic lager, made from Formosa rice, was everywhere. But in recent years, any casual observer in Taiwan will have noticed the local craft beer scene’s explosive growth. However, the culture is yet to truly crack the mainstream. 

“You might be lucky if craft beer is two percent of the market here,” Gilbert says. “Whereas it’s 20 percent in New Zealand at this stage. But look at coffee. The coffee industry didn’t exist here however many years ago, but now we’re swamped with decent coffee at every turn. That came from nothing. Coffee has a confronting taste. No one’s got this palette that’s ready for coffee, so these things change.”  

Ugly Half is now exporting to Singapore and Hong Kong, but Gilbert says this wasn’t something the label initiated. These were instances of people approaching them. Ugly Half’s focus is still on cultivating the local Taiwanese market. 

“I really want to push the benefits of local beer,” he says. “There are a lot of people within the beer community here who are into really well-established, famous, foreign breweries. But they still have to put that stuff on a boat or a plane, and it sits there for a couple of months. 

“They might be famous breweries and amazing beers, but there’s something great about local fresh beer. There’s an enormous difference in whether you’re consuming a product that tastes as intended when it leaves the brewery or not. The big thing is to encourage people to get behind local products and get to know the beer itself.”

Banner image: A selection of Ugly Half's beers. Supplied/Ugly Half

Read part one of Max's story here.

- Asia Media Centre