About a brew: Introducing Katipunan Beer

MANILA, Philippines - Revolutions these days aren’t as haughty, chivalrous, or as serious as they were 105 years ago. We’ve been conditioned by television, Disney movies, commercials promoting children’s milk/texting/Internet “revolutions” and, well, practically the entire Ideological State Apparatus, that taking up arms is wrong in all aspects and in all noble justifications.

Social media is, by far, the most effective in keeping our veins from popping. By allowing us to let off some steam and gratuitous amounts of vitriol every now and then, social media alters our perceptions of the power of an individual by giving us the most perfect illusion of affecting “small changes” to society. And all we have to do is plug in to an Internet connection and type away.

Or perhaps, we’ve been so subdued by the events of 1986 that a “bloody revolution,” wherein everyone takes up arms, becomes as unthinkable or unimaginable as pigs flying.

Yep, these days, it’s best that you go with the flow, get an iPad, and join in the new kind of revolution. Call me old-fashioned, but that’s what them kids will tell ya’ when they be talkin’ ‘bout ye ol’ revolution.

That’s why I found it odd when I caught myself enjoying a bottle of sweet-smelling beer called “Katipunan Craft,” flavored as “Indio Pale Ale.” On its bottle’s sticker, over a vintage-feel, worn-out sepia background, a mestizo sporting a barong and a tall, black top hat is drawn in ink, standing, looking proud, and wearing a pose that says “I’m sophisticated.” Talk about redefining what a revolution was — this brand was totally owning it. My conservative sensibilities of what a revolution was were offended.

But in no way was this beer offending my taste buds. This was the stuff I only read of in The Lord of the Rings saga. As I drank my bottle, I imagined myself in the Prancing Pony, sharing a toast with Peregrin Took and Merry Brandybuck, “to the Old Gaffer!”

Whole new dimension

You see, while many of us are rediscovering the many pleasures of Pale Pilsen, its full flavor and unadulterated brew, Katipunan Craft presents a whole new dimension in the enjoyment of beer. It’s no foreign brand simply offering a different taste like Guinness or Hoegaarden. Katipunan Beer is a craft beer, not a mass-produced beer-off-the-shelf. That means, it’s beer that was made with a specific agenda and a specific taste to deliver. Think of it as your mother’s home cooking — it’s by no means accidental nor is it as precisely calculated as a Happy Meal. It’s beer made to cater to the distinguished palate (best consumed with red meat).

Still, I couldn’t get over the apparent need to commodify the Revolution. So I took it upon myself to ask the makers themselves what their motives were for branding the product that way. And to my surprise, I found out that there were only four people behind the whole business. As to their reasons for naming the beer “Katipunan,” it was simply because the four of them — Raffy Taruc, Miguel Buling, Kiyo Miura, and Brett Lim — were fated to meet at a school comfortably situated in Katipunan Avenue. The whole idea of subverting foreign brands and the innovation of a first Filipino-made craft beer found its place after the beer’s branding.

Manual labor

That was a convenient revelation for me. But what I eventually found interesting was that the whole work was theirs alone — they had no one else to do the chemistry for them, no one else to do the brewing, and no machine, whatsoever, to stick in every sticker and cap every bottle. As enjoyable as the whole testing phase may have been, it remained that the formula for excellent beer was good old hard work and manual labor. (So, it also came with a hefty price tag, the four of them producing only 2,000 bottles a month.)

And they said it themselves: Katipunan Beer was their pride and joy. And at the end of the day, it was really in the work they put and the beer they made that they were fulfilled — admittedly cheesy as it sounded for them.

In the olden days, kings paid their subjects with a regular supply of barley, hops and yeast. It is said that they brewed their own beer at home, and this made them too happy, too satisfied, to even think of starting a revolt against their monarchy. And whenever the king failed to give them their rations of barley, hops and yeast, chaos would ensue.

While I found it ironic that Katipunan Beer aims to “start a craft beer revolution,” perhaps more suitable is that their beer may spark more brilliant ideas among friends, sa isang usapang lasing, to endeavor in something new. As the four of them, indeed, have.

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