Big cat 3.

At the risk of sounding like a fanatic, one last statement on the subject. Picture this: you form an airline. You raise the funds. You get the licence. You buy the planes. You pass the safety checks. You find the qualified pilots. You employ the technicians. You assemble an attractive collection of cabin crew. You offer a perfectly acceptable flight experience for passengers. In short, you get the planes off the ground, and back down again in the right spots.

None of these things are exactly simple. So, having proven you can do all that successfully, would it really be so hard for you to come up with a proper name for your venture?

Tiger isn’t a name for an airline. Would you call a new airline venture Carlsberg Air, or Air Budweiser? (Perhaps you would: but it would definitely be something related to flying people to the brewery in question.)

So: a note to the people at Tiger Airways (whose branding people should have already been lined up against the wall and shot). Nice job on the planes and everything. But one small thing: you might have heard a rumour to this effect, but the name’s already been taken. Tiger isn’t an airline. It’s a beer. So get your own name. Please.

Big cat 2.

Thailand has been the missing link in Tiger’s South East Asian empire for quite some time now. Now that the bigwigs in Jurong can fill in the Kingdom in their map of the region, they have before them one solid chunk of territory stretching from Singapore all the way up to Hanoi via Malaysia, Thailand and Cambodia.

The brand has featured in many of my best memories of Asia. Happy hour at the FCC in Phnom Penh, long evenings in the elegant surrounds of The Temple Club in Saigon, and nights round roaring log fires in Malaysia’s chilly Cameron Highlands have all been enhanced by the presence of the beer with the big cat on the label.

Big cat moves north.

There are not many things in this world where the copy is better than the original. Especially when the original is already a classic.

Every time I touch down at Changi Airport, a recurring mantra forms in my head consisting of just two words, repeated over and over again. Those two words are always ‘Tiger Beer.’
There’s something about the crisp, almost harsh taste which is a perfect foil for the steamy, blanketing Singapore atmosphere. Particularly when flying back from Europe and its wintry weather, the first taste of ice cold Tiger surrounded by the tropical smells and the unrelenting humidity is a definite signal to let the body relax into the heat. And to soak in the faintly exotic feeling that despite your resolutely first world surroundings, you’re lifting a glass to your lips just one degree above the equator.

A very fine experience. And one which I will never tire of repeating. But despite that, I can now announce that there is a better beer than Tiger Beer. And that beer is Tiger Beer.

Bars and supermarket shelves all around Bangkok and other parts of Thailand are now beginning to display the modernised version of the familiar logo with its orange lettering set against a dark blue background. And the verdict is unanimously in favour of this development.

For a few years now, Heineken has been the concoction of choice for drinkers in Thailand. Out of a large range of yeasty offerings, the Thailand-produced version of the ubiquitous Dutch brew was always frothy head and shoulders above the competition.

But now – trucked out from the same Nonthaburi brewery as Heineken itself, thanks to the Singapore-based Asia Pacific Breweries connection – Tiger Beer is changing that situation. There seems to be no doubt that when it comes to quality, the little green bottles, as good as they are, have now been knocked from the number one position by the brown-bottled contender originating from the island republic.

Having sampled far too many offerings from the recent arrival over the past couple of weeks, I can report that Thai Tiger is one of the best beers I have ever tasted. The draught is good. But the bottled version is truly exquisite: rich, sharp, crisp, refreshing, almost fruity.

The fact that the 330ml bottles are in supermarkets at a shocking 25 baht, something near a third of their Singapore cost, only adds an extra thrill to the drinking experience – in the form of a vague feeling that someone somewhere has made a mistake with the pricing, you are somehow getting away with something you shouldn’t be doing, and as a result you should do it as much as possible before the error is discovered and rectified.