Krys P.
Yelp
Moonzen is one of the earlier craft brewers in Hong Kong, and I am glad that they have expanded and now have a taproom. I was excited that they offer a tour on Fridays from 6-9pm, so I called to book, as requested by the website.
Now, to help out all future visitors... this place can be a challenge to find. Presuming your GPS/map takes you to the correct building (which is just a couple of streets off the MTR station), don't circle around looking for a lobby or entrance. Just walk into the loading dock area, where you will see some industrial elevators. They are garage sized, and the doors open up and down instead of sideway. You step inside the monster, trusting that its teeth won't chomp on you midway... Once you get to the 5th floor, you can see the door gods on the doors and you know you have arrived. Moonzen's Chinese name means door gods.
It goes without saying that I had a hard time finding the place and arrived late. No worries, the guy collecting my $250 said, the tour starts at 8, now you can just hang around and enjoy our beer. Well, it would be nice if they told me when I called. I could have enjoyed a proper dinner first.
Not in the mood to get take outs, I decided to just sit and enjoy some beer. Basically, you pay $250 for all you can drink beer. They have 6 on taps, from lager to porter. I was disappointed that they do not have the same beer as posted on their website, as there was one special release I'd love to try, but turned out their "now on tap" list hasn't been updated for months.
I was lucky enough to join an American couple chatting with the master brewer, who moved to HK 5 years ago from New Jersey. It was fun to exchange notes, an American living in HK and a HKer living in America, and hear him talk about missing American Chinese food in a city with 7 million Chinese, spending US$30 to make an American sandwich, or trying in vain to cook a Thanksgiving dinner.
The tour was very basic, and I was surprised that less than 10% of the people in the taproom actually participated in the tour. The brewer told us that as there's hardly any bars in the neighborhood, restaurants won't let people stay long on a Friday night, and most houses are too small to entertain guests, many locals enjoy coming to the taproom with some take outs and stay the evening with friends.