Can Bira 91 change the way Indians drink beer?

Not many beer entrepreneurs in the country can claim to have spent time at a sparse Trappist monastery in the French-speaking part of Belgium to understand what goes into making a good brew. Trappists lead a life of self-denial and silence dedicated to the service of God and fellow human beings. 

It's not a lifestyle you'd equate with a drink like beer, but some of the world's best brews, the most famous of them being Chimay, are still made in Trappist abbeys. Some of these monks, who rarely step out of their abbeys, have contributed significantly to the science of beer making - two strains of yeast that go into brewing Chimay, for instance, were developed 50 years apart by two monks at the abbey where the beer continues to be produced. The monks make beer so that the profits they earn can be spent to alleviate human suffering.

Anurag Jain studied computer science at Illinois Tech, worked for a year at Motorola and was bitten by the start-up bug in 2002, when he made a foray into the healthcare information and practice systems space at a time when the IT industry worldwide was recovering from the dotcom bubble burst at the turn of the millennium. He sold his company in 2007 and turned to an interest he had developed during his visits to the Brooklyn Brewery, which was on the way to his office building in New York.

The bewildering array of brews at this establishment, which was established in 1984 by an Associated Press Middle East correspondent who had had his share of war coverage, left an imprint on the young Indian looking for a purpose in life after making his first millions. Jain decided to move from dava (medicines) to daru (alcohol), introducing the Indian market to flavours of beer it has never been exposed to.

Jain started by slowly opening up the market, introducing Belgian beer brands that were known only to connoisseurs before, and then the entrepreneur in him took charge. If he could convert a segment of a market that was only exposed to run-of-the-mill commercial brands dominated by one label, why couldn't he be the first Indian to produce a Belgian beer in his backyard. It was this dream that took him to the Trappist monastery where his day would start with meditation at 5am followed by a Spartan breakfast washed down with beer made in the abbey.

The monks at the abbey would meditate six times during the day and make beer five times. For an outsider like Jain, the rigorous simplicity of the Trappist lifestyle is compensated by the profusion of beer and cheese, also produced at the abbey. With the knowledge of the craft and the market he has accumulated since 2007, and aware of the odds of working in a business taken over by three international players, Jain has launched a new duo of craft beers - a "white" wheat beer and a slightly hoppy "blonde"lager - cheekily named Bira 91 (the 91 comes from India's country code). He says these beers have been "imagined in India", but are made in Belgium with French and Belgian malts, hops from Himachal Pradesh, and water from a source near the production facility. Eventually, the production will move to what Jain describes as "two locations in North India". It is the kind of transfer of knowledge and technology that would make Bira the poster child of the Make in India campaign. There's been a resurgence of interest in speciality beers, thanks to microbreweries such as Striker and Rahul Singh's more ambitious Beer Café idea (his dream is to create what he calls the "Starbucks of beer").

Jain couldn't have asked for a more welcoming market of young drinkers thirsting for change. Will Bira change the way we drink beer?