Angkor Premium Beer is one of Cambodia’s most iconic brands, known country-wide for its great taste and refreshing qualities.

And this great taste comes from the fact that Angkor Premium Beer is brewed using what is considered to be the best water source in the country: the pure spring water from the hills outside Sihanoukville. 90 per cent of the content of beer is water, so it is vital to use the best quality water to make the best quality beer.

Beer has been brewed here since the early 1960s; the brewery was commissioned by the then Prince Norodom Sihanouk, but it closed down during Cambodia’s civil war. It reopened in the early 1990s, and has been delighting consumers ever since.

The brewery outside Sihanoukville is vast, covering over 160,000 square metres of land: it is the biggest standalone brewery in Southeast Asia. And it is filled with the latest state-of-the-art equipment from Italy and Germany. Fully automated, since its reopening in 1992, it has produced enough cans of beer, that, if laid end-to-end, they would stretch to the moon and back several times.

Although Angkor Premium Beer is very much a Cambodian product, it uses quality ingredients from around the world, from countries like France, the USA, Australia and Denmark, to ensure a consistently great taste. And they also use brew master consultants to provide their expertise from Danish brewing giant Carlsberg, one of the top brewers in the world.

The emphasis of Angkor Premium Beer has always been on quality, rather than just making a beer that would make a lot of money. Many commercial breweries will ferment their beer for seven days, and then package it to sell. Angkor ferments their beer for seven days, and then it matures for another 14 days, to make for an even finer drinking experience for the customers.

There is a small volume of exports to various countries around the world, but the brewery concentrates on serving the people of Cambodia. After all, it is The National Beer.

The new Angkor Premium Beer design, launched last year, is also interesting. The company calls the round logo surrounding the name the “Ring of Life.” It emphases how important it is to do little acts of kindness in one’s everyday life. The concept of “passing on the good” is an important one in Khmer culture, and is thought to be never ending. The gold colour of the ring signifies wealth and prosperity for all people.

Angkor beer is brewed with the highest quality water from the plunging hills above Sihanoukville. Photo supplied

To prove Angkor Premium Beer’s quality, it remains to say that recently the brewery won another gold medal in 2016 from the prestigious Monde Selection, an international quality institute in Brussels, Belgium, the home of fine beer. It previously won in 2013 and 2015. This is remarkable for a Cambodian product in the international arena, and a testament to the quality of the ingredients and commitment to making the finest beer possible.