Travel Date: October 2015
I’ve had the opportunity to visit Cambodia on several occasions. Once to visit Phnom Penh in order to visit the Killing Fields and another time to visit Siem Reap and the ancient ruins of Angkor Wat. The next time I was heading out to Phnom Penh was to play in the Phnom Penh 10’s Rugby Tournament, though as luck would have it, I hurt my arm in a practice session a couple weeks beforehand which meant no playing for me, but time to explore the microbrewery scene.
Two years ago, the microbrewery environment of Phnom Penh was fairly limited. The Hotel Himawari operated its’ own microbrewery from the lobby of the hotel. The beer was fine, but the ambiance left a bit to be desired.
A block away from the Himawari Hotel Microbrewery I ventured to the Munich Fresh Beer Restaurant. It served a lager type beer and a dark beer. Again, not much ambiance, however it was located in an air conditioned building which provided relief from the heat, but that was about it! 
Across town was a franchise import from Bangkok, Thailand called Spark & Tawandang. It was a large, standalone building that served its own lager and dark beer (though they were out of the dark when I visited).
It was geared towards entertaining customers through staged musical acts.
The bathroom had a special toilet for those needing to puke, very classy!
I had also been in touch with Erich Phillips, the owner/operator from Cerevisa Craft Brewhouse, a small brewery that sold its craft beer to a variety of bars and restaurants across the city. At the time, they did not have a real tap room, however, on Friday evenings they opened the brewery up for a few hours and invited hop heads to come over and try out their product and purchase a growler of their beer if so inclined.
I wrote Erich and asked him if it would be ok for me to bring my own growler that he could have filled. His response was that they rather welcomed people to purchase the Cerevisa Craft Brewhouse growlers as they would maintain the integrity of the product. I wrote him back to let him know that my growler was a double shelled and insulated stainless steel growler and not a recycled two litre plastic Coke bottle. He wrote back to say it would be OK 😉
Anyways, I arrived at Cerevisa Craft Brewhouse at the suggested time to find a room filled with happy people drinking several different craft beer. At the time, the ‘samples’ were full glasses for a dollar that went towards a local charity. Nice!
As I walked in, Erich caught sight of my growler and introduced himself by saying ‘You must be Scott, I recognize you by your growler’. I got a quick tour of the brewery as well as samples of the new beers that had not reached maturation.
My Growler being filled with a fantastic IPA
A fun night!
I brought the growler with me to the the Rugby Tournament the next morning. I drank well…others survived on the mass produced Angkor Beer.
CHEERS!
CRAFT BEER & Exotic Locations 