What a beverage says about its birthplace

"MY FIRST AND MAYBE LAST JOB" One of the people who had a front-row seat to Tiger Beer's journey was Mr Shue Toh Ting, who worked for 44 years at APBS in what was his "first and maybe last job".

- 

Now retired, he had worked his way up from lab technician to safety manager and efficiency controller.

By Mr Shue's time, Tiger Beer's association with military men had shifted away from soldiers of the British Empire to soldiers of newly independent Singapore.

His first brush with Tiger Beer came during national service, when servicemen could buy up to six cans duty-free each month. Mr Shue jokes that with a $90 NS salary, "if we wanted to buy more, we couldn't afford it".

A common myth at the time was that this "armed forces beer" was diluted. Mr Shue says working at the company made him realise it was the same brew sold to the public, just in a different container.

In 1980, he began working for Malayan Breweries, mostly because its old location in Alexandra Road was less than a 10-minute walk from his home.

While he thought his starting wage of $316 was low, he was able to save money by walking home for lunch.

Singapore's labour force at the time numbered just over 1.1 million, of which 30 per cent worked in the manufacturing sector — the largest sector at the time, according to the Department of Statistics. The median wage at the time was $400.

When Mr Shue was starting out, brewing was akin to a full-body workout. "It was like doing gongfu," he says. "To open the valve or close the valve, you had to kick."