Angkor Beer is Cambodia's first and most famous beer.It may be a micro brewery but it has big ambitions to make the best beer in Asia - in a converted soya milk factory in Phnom Penh, Kingdom Breweries has just begun operations, launching a pilsner called Clouded Leopard. But the market's very crowded in Cambodia.
Presenter: Robert Carmichael in Phnom Penh
Speakers: Peter Haupenthal, master brewer, Kingdom Breweries; Peter Brongers, chief executive, Kingdom Breweries
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CARMICHAEL: It is hardly the world's most original recipe. Water, hops, malt and yeast. Mix them up, let them ferment and bottle the result. Which is, of course, beer.
It is a process that master brewer, Peter Haupenthal, has performed countless times across the world - from his native Europe to both North and South America, as well as Africa, the Pacific and now Asia.
Haupenthal was brought to Cambodia this year by Kingdom Breweries, the newest entrant to the country's somewhat busy beer market, to create its launch beer, a pilsner known as Clouded Leopard.
Haupenthal explains that the brewing process is very similar across the world.
HAUPENTHAL: The equipment is almost the same, and the ingredients in most cases are all the same. Here we use malt from Germany and we use hops from the Czech Republic to make a pilsner beer. You buy the ingredients to make the beer and mix it, and buy it from the country that you want to copy, really. Then as everybody knows, the best pilsner beer comes from the Czech Republic.
CARMICHAEL: So, if I were a Czech person walking in here today, I would have a Clouded Leopard Kingdom pilsner, and it would taste pretty much like what I would get back at home in Prague?
HAUPENTHAL: We try to think so.
CARMICHAEL: Establishing a brewery is no small task - in fact, you could argue that brewing the beer is the easy part.
The first step is to encourage investors to risk several million dollars. Then you need premises fitted out with expensive machinery. Next comes sales and marketing - persuading bars and retailers to stock your product in a country where beer is hardly in short supply.
It is not easy.
One veteran bar owner told me he saw no reason to stock Clouded Leopard since doing so would merely cannibalise sales of other brands. Unless the margins were spectacular, he said, there was little point.
But plenty of outlets have signed up, says Kingdom's chief executive, Peter Brongers. More than 150 so far. The day I met him, his staff had just signed two of the capital's leading hotels.
Brongers, a veteran of the region, says he launched the brewery after spotting a gap in the market.
BRONGERS: Because if you are sitting here, whatever you drink, it's all pretty average. So, I brought a business plan, and the whole purpose was to make the best beer in South East Asia.
CARMICHAEL: Cambodians consume on average 14 litres of beer a year, most of it cheap and cheerful stuff. That is somewhat lower than its neighbours - 19 litres a year in Vietnam and more then 30 litres in Thailand.
The market is likely to grow next year. Brongers reckons by 20 percent. But how will Kingdom position its beer in a crowded market? He says Kingdom has a number of advantages, not least its focus on producing a high quality beer that is brewed locally rather than being imported.
And it is aiming for a mere sliver of the market - perhaps 1 per cent - in a country where premium brands are starting to take off in areas such as clothing, vehicles and luxury goods, albeit for a tiny minority.
BRONGERS: What we see is a development in this country that people are appreciating more quality products. That there is a growing amount of people that are able to afford quality products. That people start to know more about quality products, because if you don't know what's available in the world you cannot choose. We go for a total overall market share of the Cambodian market of not even 1 per cent.
CARMICHAEL: Three weeks ago, after fine tuning Haupenthal's creation, Kingdom launched its first beer.
As one of those in Clouded Leopard's target market, it fell to me to taste it at Kingdom's riverside bar above its brewery. For reasons of journalistic ethics, I should point out that I paid for my beer.
And after all that we're going to find out just how good, or otherwise, it is. So here goes.
I must say, that is quite good. There is a bit of honey in that, very crisp, refreshing - I'd certainly say it is refreshing.
For those who think they have tried every pilsner under the sun, the news is one more has arrived.
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