Oriental Brewery Information & Oriental Brewery Links at HealthHaven.com

Oriental Brewery or OB is a South Korean brewery established by the Doosan Group in 1952. It was purchased by InBev in 1998. In 2009, it was sold by Anheuser-Busch InBev as the parent company sought to reduce its debt. It was sold to an affiliate of Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co.. Anheuser-Busch InBev has retained the right to purchase OB five years from its sale, at predetermined financial terms. Today OB produces several of Korea's most popular beverages including the OB, Cass and Cafri lager brands.

[edit] Brands

[edit] OB Lager

OB Lager is a pale, 4.4% A.B.V. pale lager available in cans and bottles, and served on draft in Korea. Originally brewed in 1948; the name was changed from OB Lager simply to OB in 2003; the recipe was altered to include rice. The name changed to OB Blue in June 2006 with another slight recipe tweak.

[edit] Cass Lager

A pale-golden pale lager with an 4.5% ABV; one of the three best selling beers in South Korea. Originally brewed by the Cass Brewery, the brand had been taken over by Jinro-Coors, one of the country's leading brewers. After having around 70% of the Korean lager market in the 1980's, by 1994 Cass had fallen behind Hite as Korea's top selling lager. Oriental Brewery bought the Cass brand from Jinro-Coors in 1999 and built it up again, with OB declaring a 51% market share in 2000. In 2007, the higher alcohol Cass Red was introduced.

Non-alcoholic look-alikes of Cass can be found with brand names such as "Cars" and "Cdss". Some norae-bang (karaoke parlour) establishments have been known to try and pass off these imitations as the real thing, as Korean law prohibits noraebangs marked as such from selling alcoholic drinks within its premises (as opposed to noraejujeom establishments which are allowed to sell alcohol).

[edit] Cass Ice Light

Cass Ice Light is a low-carb pale lager with 4.2% ABV.

[edit] Cass X2

Cass X2 is a beer similar to corona with 2.9% ABV.

[edit] OB Light

It is an OB Lager with 30% lower calories with 4.2% ABV.

[edit] Cass Red

A pale lager with 6.9% contains higher amount of alcohol.

[edit] Cafri

Cafri (ABV 4.2%) is perhaps the lightest of all mainstream Korean beers and bears a closer resemblance to Mexican beers such as Corona and Sol than the typical European lagers. It is widely available in clear 330 ml (11.2 U.S. fl oz; 11.6 imp fl oz) long-neck bottles but falls behind OB, Cass and Hite in popularity.

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[edit] External links

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