Jing-A began as a homebrewing project between two friends who met while working in Beijing's corporate world: Alex Acker, from Connecticut, and Kristian Li, a Canadian of Chinese descent. They brewed at night in whatever space they could find. Their first beer, an IPA called 'Hoppy New Year', celebrated the festivities in 2012. In early 2013 they built their first small professional brewery inside a bistro in Beijing's embassy district.
The name
京A (Jing-A) is the prefix of Beijing's very first licence plates: 京, jīng, means 'capital' and is the abbreviation for Beijing. Today drivers are lucky to get a much later letter, so Jing-A stands for old-school Beijing.
Chinese ingredients
Jing-A is known for brewing with ingredients that had rarely been used in beer: Sichuan peppercorn, red rice koji, ginger, sweet osmanthus flowers, jasmine tea, hawthorn berries, sweet potato and local watermelons, alongside its own interpretations of classic styles such as IPA, witbier and stout. Its marketing was equally playful: the founders once tied discounts to Beijing's daily pollution levels.