Counterfit Beer in China

Evidently there are breweries selling fancy bottles of beer to bars in China, like Corona and Budweiser, that have been refilled with cheaper lagers (is it possible?). The companies responsible for such devious behaviors even go the extra mile to cook the beers once re-bottled to disguise the taste difference. Bar goers don't normally notice any difference.

There is very little in China that cannot be counterfeited – that includes beer too, as the Xishan Bureau of Commerce confirmed on Tuesday when it raided a rented space behind a cement factory in the Majie area that contained more than 20,000 bottles of fake Budweiser and Carlsberg beers.

The secret behind the scam: taking a big, cheap bottle of local Kingstar Beer, splitting its contents between two smaller Budweiser or Carlsberg bottles and a bottle-capping machine to fix caps to the top of the bottles. The total time it takes to increase the Kingstar's value up to ten times – ten seconds.

Evidently, counterfeit alcohol is quite common in China as are many food products, beer just one of many things that can be faked. Even many of the finer hotels carry bogus bottles of premium booze. So what to trust? How about your tastebuds, as long as you don't get sick from that extra bacteria in your drink...

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