Once upon a time, in a land far, far away, a businessman named Barry Bowen thought that his country should produce its own beer. So-- being a very smart guy, Bowen brought an expert from Germany to Belize to set up the operation and make German-quality in Belize. Today, Belikin is the leading domestically produced beer brand in Belize -- and has the benefit of having a virtual monopoly (as explained below). Whether you are patronizing a local bar, restaurant or anyplace else you go in Belize --- you will be amazed by the market penetration this company has achieved. And the tourists from the US, Canada, Europe and other places seem to wholeheartedly support the status quo. I never heard anyone complain - although I was initially mystified as to why the beers I was drinking seemed to disappear so quickly. Then one night -- out of curiousity -- I used the Internet to find that 284 ml is only 9.6 fluid ounces! The glass used in the bottles is extra thick-- so the beers have a similar appearance to America's standard 12 fluid ounce bottles. Nonetheless-- when you visit Belize you quickly realize that the beer is ubiquitous in this country. Belize is Belikin-- and Belikin is Belize! The most fascinating way this has all come about will be detailed in this article-- and is largely the story of am amazing man named Barry Bowen (who incidently died-- at the age of 64 -- in a freak airplane crash just before landing at the San Pedro airport shortly after the date of this blog-- which was published "after the fact"). Belikin beer is brewed by the Belize Brewing Company, Ltd. -- which is owned by the Bowen family. The Belikin beer brand name was first marketed (according to differing sources) in the late 1960s or in 1971. Its tagline is "The Only Beer Worth Drinking".The name "Belikin" comes from the Maya language and means "Road to the East" (this is a term which some have also suggested is the origin of the name of "Belize" - although the most accepted derivation says the name comes from the Belize River (meaning "muddy")).The standard Belikin label features a drawing of a famous Pre-Columbian Maya Temple-pyramid at Altun Ha, but they have some other labels as shown below:
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| This is NOT the Standard Label I Have Been Seeing-- but You Get the Idea |
Belikin Beer (green cap-- 4.8% alcohol content)
Belikin stout (blue cap -- 6.5% alcohol content)\
Belikin Premium
Guiness (Belikin is the local bottler and distributor)
Lighthouse lager (4.2% alcohol and marketed for the ladies)
The ancient Egyptians knew how to brew beer. Two thousand years ago African tribesmen brewed their own. In the U.S.-- in the 1930's and ’40's -- people commonly made batches of beer in their cellars (that was supposed to be used for home consumption only, of course). Today, micro-breweries are springing up as small businesses and in homes all over the world as people log on to the Internet for the wealth of information on the subject of making home-made beer. Beer has been a part of nearly every culture in the world --but that doesn’t mean local beer always tastes good. In Belize, the beer does taste good, thanks to the efforts of Barry Bowen and the Belize Brewing Company, Ltd.
Belikin History
The grounds of the Belize Brewing Company’s modern plant in Ladyville also house Belize’s Coca Cola bottling plant and the Crystal Water bottling facility. Barry Bowen's father started Crystal Bottling Works and Barry began brewing Belikin beer in 1971. To make sure he was getting a quality product, Barry hired a brewmaster from Germany to set up the operation. All of the equipment came from Germany as well. Reinhard Häpp-- the current brewmaster at Belize Brewing Company-- now oversees a scientific process designed to make sure that Belikin beer is consistently good; each batch as good as those that preceded it. His domain is that of gleaming copper and stainless steel vats used to process the unique beer of Belize. Although beer is relatively easy to make, the many steps in the brewing process allow for changes in taste that reflect the society that makes it. In Asia, the malt is made from rice, while in other parts of the world ginger roots and even spruce pine are used. Since Beliken is made like beers from Germany, all of the ingredients are imported except for the sugar and the water.
If you tour the Belikin plant you will probably began in the malt room -- where the grist of imported grain is mixed with water and fed into the "mash tun". Enzymes begin to convert the starches of the grain to sugar before the mixture goes to the "lauter tun", a huge filter that separates the grain from the liquid. The liquid then goes to the kettle where the hops are added and the heat kills the enzymes-- stopping their reactions with the starches. The liquid is then cooled with both regular water and chilled water and goes into fermentation tanks where it is held at 50 degrees Fahrenheit for about a week. What is now “green beer” is then stored in the aging room for two to three weeks before going to a filtering room where it is filtered once again. At this stage the beer is sent to the “bright beer” tanks. It then enters the bottling process after being filtered once again and having carbonation added.
Belikin beer’s recycled bottles (they have value so don't toss them) have an average life of ten fillings. It’s little wonder that their life span is short. After a separation and inspection process, the bottles and the kegs for the draft beer are washed with a caustic soda solution that guarantees that each container is spotless. The bottles speed along a conveyor system where they are filled, capped, inspected and then date coded as they come off the line. As a last step of the brewing process, the bottles are then heated to pasteurize the beer and give it a longer shelf life. Coca Cola is also bottled in Belize - primarily in returnable bottles rather than in cans. In the soft drink sector, only Coke products are sold in Belize as Pepsi has somehow been squeezed out of the picture. Both Coke and Belikin have a virtual monopoly on the beverage market in Belize.
More Belikin History
In 1978, shortly before Belize received its independence, Barry Bowen bought the Bowen & Bowen Company from his father. Barry Bowen moved quickly to develop and exploit the opportunities he saw in the backwater of Belize. He developed the Coca-Cola franchise and turned Belikin-- first brewed in the late 1960s-- into the national drink of Belize. Until Belikin came along, Belizeans mostly drank imported Heineken and Guinness stout. With a local beer now available, the PUP raised taxes on imports, and most Belizeans turned to Belikin.
In the early 1970s, a challenger to Belikin came along. Two brothers, Arturo and Orlando Matus, whose ancestors came to Belize as refugees from the Caste War in the Yucatan, started Charger beer. Many Belizeans seemed to think that Charger tasted even better than Belikin. The Matus brothers and Charger did well for a while, but then, as the story goes, Bowen and Bowen started buying up the empty Charger bottles. In Belize at that time all glass containers were imported into the country, at considerable cost. So bottling companies used only returnable bottles and paid for their return. Bowen paid a premium for the bottles and stored them in a warehouse. This eventually broke Charger because the company had to keep importing expensive bottles and found it difficult to sustain a prifitable enterprise. The Mayus brothers' bank eventually foreclosed on the company's loans, and Charger went out of business, leaving Belikin as the only beer in Belize.
While parts of the sad Charger story may be apocryphal, and a similar story is told about how Bowen put the local Pepsi distributor out of business, it is undoubtedly true that Barry Bowen and his managers were skilled beer marketers and operators. They created a nationwide distribution system of wholesale outlets and delivery trucks and barges that made sure beer was delivered to every bar and store in the nation. They advertised freely, became actively involved in community programs and developed popular merchandising efforts like the Belikin calendar, which annually features some of the most beautiful women of Belize.Today-- thanks in part to the virtual monopoly status granted by the Belize government to Bowen Brewing-- Belikin controls nearly the entire beer market in Belize. The popular beers of neighboring Guatemala and Mexico cannot be imported into Belize, and only limited U.S. and foreign beers can be brought into the country. Although under recently imposed CARICOM rules beers such as Jamaica's Red Stripe and Heineken brewed in St. Kitts must be allowed into the Belize market, they are making little headway against the solidly entrenched Belikin and related Bowen brands.
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