Every few weeks someone in a Da Nang expat group asks where to drink beer that isn't a lager. The answer usually starts at 1A Võ Nguyên Giáp, a big taproom on the sand at the Sơn Trà end of My Khe Beach. That's East West Brewing's Da Nang taproom, and the company behind it is one of the brewers that built Vietnam's craft beer scene.

The founder: San Diego, Chill Skybar, then Budweiser

East West's founder and general manager is Trương Thế Lộc, who goes by Loc Truong. He told Vietcetera in 2017 that he is Vietnamese-American and left Vietnam at six. He grew up in San Diego, which he called "the mecca of craft beer", and first came back on a study-abroad semester at sea in 2005.

After the University of San Diego and a stint at Wachovia Bank, he moved to Vietnam. There he helped market Chill Skybar, the Saigon rooftop bar, as a small sweat-equity shareholder. Then he took a job helping launch Budweiser's business in Vietnam. In an interview published by Vietnam's national tourism site, he describes himself as AB InBev's first hire in the country, later its national business manager for premium brands.

That job raised a question he couldn't shake. Big brewers sold the world's beer in Vietnam, but "Vietnam doesn't really have a good representation," he said. "I wanted to show Vietnam can be a global contender in the beer industry."

The name reflects the mix of Eastern and Western influences he wanted in the company, and in the beer.

A brewery and taproom under one roof

The company says it has been going "since 2016", on its homepage. Its first brewery and taproom, a 1,600-square-meter building on Lý Tự Trọng Street in Saigon's District 1, was due for a soft launch in the week of January 19, 2017, Vietcetera reported. That explains why some sources give 2017 as the founding year: it's when the doors opened.

Putting the brewhouse and the bar in the same building was deliberate. "We want to be open and transparent about the brewing process, so people can see it happen for themselves," Truong told Vietcetera. Distribution, he said, could wait.

It didn't wait long. The company's timeline says it began supplying outlets in Ho Chi Minh City in its first year and introduced cans in 2019. During the pandemic it shifted to supermarkets, convenience stores and home delivery, and in 2021 it launched Da Lat Cider. By 2023, FoodNavigator reported that East West beer was in more than 1,000 restaurants, hotels and shops in Vietnam, with small exports to Taiwan and Hong Kong. About 75% of its drinkers were local.

What it brews

The core range is deliberately approachable. Truong told FoodNavigator that the "traditional four" sell best to Vietnamese drinkers: Pale Ale, IPA, Pilsner and Hefeweizen. "Instead of jumping too far from the mass beer to do crazy and interesting products, we want to focus on consumer education," he said.

Today the company lists five flagships: East West IPA, East West Pale Ale, East West Summer (a hefeweizen), East West Pilsner and East West Rosé. The Rosé was originally called Saigon Rose. It's a wheat ale brewed with raspberries, mulberries and strawberries. Visitors from markets saturated with IPAs, Truong said, tend to go for that one or for the Coffee Vanilla Porter.

Malt and hops are mostly imported, but seasonal beers use Vietnamese ingredients, such as mulberries, kumquat, guava, coffee and pineapple, according to FoodNavigator. The company's brewery page lists its brew crew, led by Nhi Mai, whom it calls "The Brewing Wizard".

The Da Nang chapter

The company calls 2023 "a new coastal home". That spring it opened its second taproom in Da Nang, at 1A Võ Nguyên Giáp, a few dozen steps from My Khe Beach in Phước Mỹ ward. Tuổi Trẻ described it in April 2023:

  • Size: about 1,000 square meters of restaurant on grounds of more than 2,500 square meters, with room for up to 500 people.
  • Spaces: an outdoor lobby facing the sea, a rooftop terrace, the main dining room and two private rooms.
  • Taps: nine lines, including Pacific Pilsner, Independence Stout, Modern Belgian Blonde and Modern Belgian Dark alongside the core beers.

"We hope the restaurant in Da Nang can contribute to local tourism," Trương Thế Lộc told the paper.

The taproom's page lists hours of 8 a.m. to 1 a.m., seven days a week. The kitchen leans on seafood, as you'd expect a few meters from the water. Bookings go through the page's form or the taproom's Facebook page. The company says each taproom has its own regional menu and some beers you can only get on tap there.

Da Nang has since become a two-taproom city for East West. In 2025 the company began opening taprooms inside Wink hotels. Its city-centre Da Nang taproom is on a Wink hotel's ground floor, and the company calls it its "4th craft microbrewery." There are also taprooms in Quy Nhon, Phu Quoc, Mui Ne, Hai Phong and Can Tho.

Where it sits in Vietnam's craft scene

East West was not Da Nang's first craft brewer. That distinction belongs to 7 Bridges, which started here around 2017. Nor was it Vietnam's first. But it was one of the Saigon breweries that made craft beer a business rather than a curiosity, and its beer now turns up on supermarket shelves. The beachfront taproom is one of the city's best-known places to drink it.

For the rest of the city's craft beer, including BREWHAHA's taprooms and the Da Nang brewery behind them, see our guide to craft beer in Da Nang. For the beach itself, see our guide to Da Nang's beaches.

Sources

This story was compiled by the Da Nang Voice news desk from the published sources listed above. Facts, figures and quotes are attributed to those sources; Da Nang Voice did not conduct interviews for it unless the text says so. Corrections are dated and noted at the top of the story. Read our corrections policy. Spotted an error? Tell us.