In Korean folklore, dokkaebi are supernatural creatures that look like a cross between a goblin and a troll. They’re known for their mischievous nature and love of good food and drink. In one story, old household objects like brooms gain sentience and transform into dokkaebi who, perhaps because of their provenance, often seek human company to play games or just mingle.
While Oakland brewery Dokkaebier was more obviously inspired by the sociable and alcohol-loving nature of dokkaebi, Korean American founder Youngwon Lee points out that dokkaebi and beer are both capable of shapeshifting. A beer might start off as, for example, an ordinary Stout, but through the addition of certain ingredients, turn into something unexpected.
Lee, who usually lopes around the brewery with an easy smile underneath his baseball cap, also shares some characteristics with these creatures of folklore. His peripatetic past saw him traversing different worlds much like dokkaebi, who jump from the supernatural to the human plane with ease. Lee has lived in South Korea, Guam and several different cities in the U.S. He sees himself as a “third-culture kid,” someone who has spent a great part of their formative years in different cultures and has managed to integrate elements of these cultures into their own birth culture.
“[To] a lot of immigrants [who] still don’t speak English, they consider me very Americanized,” he says. “[To] the kids born here, I have a very Korean mindset in a way. For them, I’m an outsider as well.”
Still, Lee says that he never really thought about his identity until he founded Dokkaebier and started contemplating how he wanted the craft brewery to be perceived. As he contemplated the company’s mission and identity, he kept coming back to the same questions: “Is Dokkaebier very Korean? Is it Asian? Is it American? Is it craft beer or is it a cultural product?”
Lee feels equally influenced by Korean and American culture. This straddling of worlds is reflected in Dokkaebier’s beers, which from the start have included Asian flavor profiles and ingredients like a five-spice berry known as omija, cardamom, green peppercorn and bamboo.
Few breweries focus on Asian ingredients as part of their main offerings as opposed to occasional gimmicky flavors. This is true even back on the continent, where, thanks partly to colonial trauma, foreign imports and brands enjoy an elevated status not usually afforded to local ones.
The craft beer scene in Asia is only about 10 years old, compared to the U.S., which saw the modern craft beer movement emerge in the 1960s, according to Charles Guerrier, founder of Asia Brewers Network, a portal dedicated to the brewing industry in the region. And while brewers across Asia are interested in experimenting with local produce like fruit, spices, honey, and tea, Guerrier says “these beers may not be the mainstay of each brewery’s production.”
Dave Byrn, the founder of Southeast Asian beer consulting firm Crafted Beverage Solutions, has also noticed a dearth of local beer ingredients in his region. Byrn notes that brewers in Vietnam, the biggest beer market in Southeast Asia, rarely take advantage of the nation’s local produce. “It’s strange in Vietnam especially because beer isn’t associated with those kinds of [creative, unique local ingredients] typically,” he says.
It's not to say that there isn’t great beer coming out of Asia, but as Lee says, “A lot of Asian brewers are finding their own styles, but it’s all inspired by American craft beer. What I’m doing [is] neither Asian nor American … and that’s where the third culture comes in.”
Among Dokkaebier’s flavors, it’s possible that it’s the kimchi sour—which won silver in the 2023 World Beer Cup and platinum in the 2022 Brewski Awards—encapsulates Lee’s occupation of two cultural spheres.
A side dish made with fermented vegetables and a good dose of high-spirited seasonings like garlic and sun-dried chili peppers called gochugaru, kimchi is a Korean staple whose presence is so ubiquitous at meals it’s hard not to feel Twilight Zone-levels of suspicion if it’s missing. Although there have been some gimmicky attempts at kimchi craft beers in the U.S., most haven’t approached what kimchi’s potential as a beer.
Asian ingredients and flavors are often mined by non-Asians who lack the cultural context about how, when and why they are used. Many of these attempts have led to ham-handed, literal interpretations that result in tragic Frankenstein’s monsters — uncanny beers with mismatched parts — or infusions that timidly hint at exoticism without alienating palates unused to seasoned food. However, Dokkaebier’s kimchi sour starts with a whirl of ginger, a glow on the tongue that eventually gives way to the deeper warmth of gochugaru, conducted through a rich sourness. The effect is less a faithful recreation of kimchi flavors than a play on kimchi’s essence that also somehow feels close to what kimchi is actually like.
It takes a lot of cultural confidence to pull this off, a self-assurance that can only come from someone whose personal experience with kimchi is so natural and comfortable that there’s room for play within authenticity. Considering Lee’s background, it’s really no surprise that he can pinpoint the essence of Asian flavors the way he does, and why Dokkaebier’s kimchi sour exists in the form that it does. It’s the sensibility of someone who has adapted to different contexts without losing sight of what is fundamental, a comfort with one’s own culture combined with an outsider’s perspective.
After spending his childhood in Seoul, Lee moved to Guam as an adolescent to live with his uncles, who were South Korean veterans of the Vietnam War who settled in Guam. To Lee’s family, the U.S. territory seemed like a good starting point to learn about American culture in preparation for a later move to the U.S. while still being relatively close to South Korea.
His next stop was New Jersey. Lee then did a stint at the University of California Berkeley that didn’t last long before he headed back to South Korea to care for his ailing grandmother. After her death, he decided to stay in Seoul for a couple more months, taking on a part-time job in a wine import business that Lee’s former boss in New Jersey had started. The months soon stretched into years as he studied the alcohol business, opened up a wine-tasting bar and got reacquainted with Korean culture.
Lee had to go out of his way to appear older, only wearing suits and changing his mannerisms, to deal with the Korean age hierarchy, said Dokkaebier operations specialist Justin Cho. Throughout all of these travels, Lee learned how to adjust how American or Korean he has to be according to the situation or the place in which he’s living.
In 2017, Lee returned to the U.S. to help set up an outpost of the Korean craft brewery The Booth, which shut down its American operations in June 2019. Lee immediately got to work on Dokkaebier, bolstered by what he’d learned about the craft beer industry and certain that he could make Dokkeabier stand out.
“When I started, I felt I could fill this gap between Asian culture and the craft beer space, and I jumped in,” Lee says.
That mission soon grew from establishing and running a brewery to fostering a place for culture.
“I do want to make this successful, I do want to make a path for a lot of Asian Americans [and others] in the craft beer industry to see what we do and [provide] more culture in the products that we make,” Lee says.
This mission was partially inspired by the dissonance Lee felt after being treated like an ordinary person in the alcohol industry in Asia but a token face in the U.S.
“There’s space for everyone to be in this industry. It can be done, and you’re not alone.”
“I had a good long-term experience in the Asia-Pacific market, and it was pretty normal. But when I came here to work in the beer industry, I realized that I’m the only Asian guy going around. You know, in Korea or or when I go to Hong Kong or any other country, if you meet with Asia Pacific reps, you could be white, you could be Asian. When I came over here, I didn’t think it was weird. But then, just as I’m going through different stuff and getting more involved, there’s no one like me, right?”
Mario Benjamin, co-founder of Oakland’s only Black-owned brewery, Hella Coastal, which contract brews out of Dokkaebier’s premises, says it’s important for BIPOC brewers to make their presence known within the community.
“There's space for everyone to be in this industry,” he says. “It can be done, and you're not alone.”
As Dokkaebier works to normalize underrepresented faces in the craft beer industry, Cho says, its beer flavors are doing the same for Korean ingredients.
“A lot of craft beer drinkers aren’t the most diverse people,” he says, “and introducing these ‘exotic’ ingredients can destigmatize and de-exotify them.”
“Asian cuisine has really interesting spices, and I feel like [Dokkaebier] showcases that well in their beers. You don’t see [the spices] incorporated in such a unique and creative way elsewhere.”
For Lee, that could mean anything from experimenting with flavors incorporating oyster sauce, a Chinese condiment that contains oyster extract and spices, or Samyang buldak “fire chicken” instant noodles, a common Korean comfort food. Lee says that “inspiration comes naturally from day-to-day life [as a Korean American] … looking at other products, doing grocery shopping, and going to the supermarket.”
Dokkaebier has also made beers inspired by Korean pop culture: including a water celery Witbier inspired by the Oscar-winning film Minari, (“minari” is the Korean word for water celery); and a limited-edition experiment with dalgona, the honeycomb toffee candy, in honor of the Netflix series Squid Game in which it prominently features.
While such flavors can educate a non-Asian crowd, they also create a sense of comfort for Asian customers. At a Halloween party hosted by the San Francisco chapter of the Taiwanese American Professionals at Dokkaebier, board member Cheryl Chang was enthused about the use of peppercorns and other familiar ingredients.
“Asian cuisine has really interesting spices, and I feel like [Dokkaebier] showcases that well in their beers,” she said. “You don’t see [the spices] incorporated in such a unique and creative way elsewhere.”
It’s worth noting that the Dokkaebier team reached out to the Taiwanese American Professionals to host their party at the brewery. Lee has a tendency to pull different groups together and host neighborhood events, like Oakland’s first festival celebrating chimaek — Korean fried chicken (“chi) and beer (“maekju”). Perhaps it’s to compensate for the unmoored experience of being a third-culture kid.
“You don’t drink beer sad by yourself. You drink it with friends. We want to be the brand that bridges cultures and connects people.”
There’s something very inspiring about his curiosity and openness, which draws a like-minded group of people. Cho, for example, moved to the Bay Area from Los Angeles after meeting Lee at a beer festival. “My mom saw in a Korean newspaper about this guy that was putting crazy ingredients in beer, and that’s what I wanted to do for a very long time: combine something I love and my culture and make something really exciting out of it.”
When he met Lee, he said, “Hey, I don’t care what I do, I just want to be part of this.” Not long after, he found himself storing some of his belongings at Lee’s house while working out of the same space.
When asked about his drive to build a community and gather people around him, Lee laughs.
“You don’t drink beer sad by yourself,” he says. “You drink it with friends. We want to be the brand that bridges cultures and connects people.”
There’s a Korean saying that dokkaebi only appear when the forest is deep enough, that magic only happens when the conditions are right—perhaps when the right people come together to build something new.
Words by Maloy Luakian
Photos by Jason Perry
