best place to find Vietnamese beer inexpensively in chicago?

is there any good place to buy Vietnamese beer in chicago?

i don't really like beer but I kind of fell into 33 and actually like it, maybe this is my gateway to acquiring a taste 20 years after most people :p i bought a 6 pack of Saigon Export or something at the Foremost liquor store on argyle and it was a whopping $10. this seems crazy. prefer 33 ("ba ba") but either will do. any other places stock it that aren't convenience store prices? (like any of the groceries there? i haven't noticed it but maybe i missed...)

Why would $10 for a 6-pack of Vietnamese beer seem crazy? Seems about on par with most Asian imports (give or take a buck).

The people in North Vietnam (when I was in Hai Phong) like Tiger. They also drink a lot of stuff from Australia like Carlsberg. Don't start drinking Hanoi vodka Dane. That shit is nasty.

I'm not sure what "Hanoi vodka" is, but I've got some really good Hibiscus Brandy and Apricot Liqueur that were made by Son Tinh for Highway 4 restaurants in Hanoi...they are both phenomenal.

On the original topic, I also can't see how $10 for a 6-pack of imported beer is crazy...at first blush compared to the $0.15/glass you might pay sitting on the sidewalk in Hanoi, maybe, but a reasonable person would consider the additional cost of a higher grade product for export, expensive packaging and shipping apparatus and various other overhead that goes into exporting alcohol...not to mention taxes and fees at every level.

$10 aint bad for imported beer from Asia. The OP said he never got into beers so I think he's not familiar with the prices.

A 6-pack of Stella or Guinness is what? $8?

The question is, why do you want to buy overpriced low quality beer from Asia when there are hundreds of delicious hand crafted beers from all over the place available at your local Binny's!

What KSeecs said.

How about nostalgia? Or, for the same reason that sometimes I want a bowl of phở instead of a steak or hot dog?

KSeecs wrote:The question is, why do you want to buy overpriced low quality beer from Asia when there are hundreds of delicious hand crafted beers from all over the place available at your local Binny's!

i guess simply put I just have never been much of a beer drinker and the qualities in their beer are more likable than others I've tried. i do sample locally crafted beers often but ... I haven't really pinpointed what qualities I actually dislike vs like, I guess. It's a work in progress.

so i've found saigon export @ the above mentioned and binny's... but no 33 cans or bottles anywhere. I think they only do cans, though. though i know they must have them, i had one at Hai Yen. oddly, i saw ba ba in france but there it wasn't was actually made in France. a Vietnamese friend just told me ba ba ba is made by the french in vietnam.

i fully understand $9-10/6 isn't horrible, but my rationality of $10/6 being overpriced was based off of actually consuming it at a restaurant here and it wasn't more than $2/beer even in a restaurant here. i figured they were getting it at a better price than they were selling it at, somewhere. :p

the Vietnamese "vodka" is wonderful if you're on a non-tourist train overnight trying to sleep on a top bunk of a cot-like-bed that appears to be 40 years old with no real bedding provided... i highly recommend it in fact.

KSeecs wrote:The question is, why do you want to buy overpriced low quality beer from Asia when there are hundreds of delicious hand crafted beers from all over the place available at your local Binny's!

I buy overpriced, "low quality" beer all the time because I can't stomach drinking twelve ounces of oatmeal mixed with sharp cheddar, which is exactly what "craft" brews taste like to me. If I want to taste food, I eat, if I want beer I'll have a Tecate.

For nostalgic reasons as well, a couple of years after returning from VN, I wanted some Vietnamese beer. I went to Mitsuwa in Arlington Heights and they had some Bia 33[3]. It was around 8.99 for a 6 pack at the time (2007-2008). Not sure if they still sell it though. You can check it out there.

For the first time, I saw Laotian beer last night at Devon Market. It was quite expensive, so I decided against trying it, but I was intrigued. Do they even grow hops in SE Asia?

d4v3 wrote:Do they even grow hops in SE Asia?

Two hop varieties originated in Asia:

# Humulus japonicus L. (the Japanese hop), an annual species, is widespread throughout much of China and Japan, but nowhere else.
# Humulus yunnanensis L. is a perennial wild species that we know little about; it occurs at high altitudes in south China, especially Yunnan province.

Not sure how commonly they're used in beer (the traditional beer hop is Humulus Lupus), but yes, they grow hops in SE Asia.