The Turkish beer market has experienced 20% growth from 2001 to 2005 with many international brands gaining popularity.
Efes Beverage Group, a subsidiary of Anadolu Group, is the largest producer of beer in Turkey with approximately 80% of the market share. Their main product line is called Efes Pilsen (5.0% ABV), after the Turkish name for the ancient city of Ephesus near the İzmir brewery. The beer has been described to have a "tangy malt and hops aroma, rich malt in the mouth, and a bitter-sweet finish that becomes dry and hoppy". Efes also produces Efes Dark, Efes Light, Efes Extra, Bomonti and Marmara. Also, as of March 2005, Foster's Lager has been brewed, marketed and distributed in Turkey through Efes Beverage Group. Efes exports to markets in the Middle East, Europe and Africa. A further addition has been the Efes Dark Brown which is flavored with coffee.
Efes also produce a heffe wiess and a heffe weiss dunkel under the Gusta label.
Türk Tuborg, a former subsidiary of the Danish Carlsberg/Tuborg group, also brews beer in Turkey under the Tuborg name but is now owned by the Israeli Central Bottling Company (CBC). Danish Carlsberg is also popular in Turkey among other brands found internationally.
Another major brand, Tekel Birası, is known as the oldest producer of beer in Turkey (founded in 1890). It was a state monopoly brand until 2004. There is also Perge Pilsner managed by the Sural Group, which is located and mainly consumed in the Antalya province. There is also Diabrau produced for the Dia supermarket chain
Famous quotes containing the words beer in, beer and/or turkey:
“Were I Diogenes, I would not move out of a kilderkin into a hogshead, though the first had had nothing but small beer in it, and the second reeked claret.”
—Charles Lamb (1775–1834)
“You can’t be a Real Country unless you have A BEER and an airline—it helps if you have some kind of a football team, or some nuclear weapons, but at the very least you need a BEER.”
—Frank Zappa (1940–1993)
“It has been an unchallengeable American doctrine that cranberry sauce, a pink goo with overtones of sugared tomatoes, is a delectable necessity of the Thanksgiving board and that turkey is uneatable without it.... There are some things in every country that you must be born to endure; and another hundred years of general satisfaction with Americans and America could not reconcile this expatriate to cranberry sauce, peanut butter, and drum majorettes.”
—Alistair Cooke (b. 1908)