Foam palace

Food at Slow Boat includes a spicy "Aztec chocolate" (above) dessert, the signature "fryburger" and sausage platters that go with any beer.

A key development: While craft brewers may be inspired by Western models, they don't depend on foreigners to survive. Here, the butts on barstools are mostly Chinese these days, and more and more brewers are homegrown as well.

Slow Boat started as a craft-beer supplier for other restaurants and bars before opening up a modest shop in 2011 and its new flagship this fall. The menu is still modest, appealing and manageable, from that popular "fryburger" (55 yuan) with French fries inside the bun to a summery salad of watermelon, salmon and feta cheese.

Beer however, remains the focus, and in keeping with the trend－and the competitors－this crew is making lots of them.

Besides the Mushroom Brown, a parade of seasonal brews includes a raspberry pale ale, a Belgian wit, an American wheat and a chocolate sea-salt stout－a heady black beer in addition to Slow Boat's staple vanilla stout. For hop heads, there's no shortage of intriguing IPAs as well, mugs of the purest pride in today's craft-beer art.

"Forget wine," says American expat Sonny Willis. "For me, craft beer is where it's at."

Wu Yiyao contributed to this story.

If you go

Slow Boat Brewery

No 6 Sanlitun Nan Lu, Chaoyang district, Beijing. 010-6592-5388.