Review of Brewing Love / 취하는 로맨스

For those of you who have never set foot virtually into this space, welcome! This is my blog, which serves as an online diary and digital archive of everything I’ve watched, read, and experienced in the past few years.

Recently, it has become a source of income for me, and a crux as I faced unexpected unemployment after an opportunity I was told I had fell through. Feel free to click around if you liked this post.

In addition to this become a vital income source while I’m unemployed, I’ve been actually catching up on my content game. There are some many movies, television shows, and books I’ve watched and read throughout the years but never had the chance to review, so while I’ve had the free time, I’m dedicating more time to catching up on these reviews.

One of my greatest purchases in 2024 was a Viki Premium subscription for myself. I used the blog as an excuse to ultimately purchase it, but I’ve watched so many dramas since getting it. One may call it an addiction, especially as I’ve been funemployed, but I’m seeing it as an investment as long as I get some exercise.

A show I’ve recently been watching as each episode drops is Brewing Love. I’ve been all over this show and make sure to watch it every time the two episodes drop at a time on Viki. It just wrapped up as I’m typing this, and I wanted to get my review out early while the memories were still fresh.

Let’s get into the review! I feel like I’m rambling already in the introduction section of this blog post, and this may feel a little like semantic if you’re here for the review.

A beer brewer and a woman working at a alcohol company fall in love after meeting.

This drama is only twelve episodes, but I would say it’s appropriate that it’s only twelve episodes. The plot felt like it fit within this time frame, and because it doesn’t delve too deeply into the B plots, it works the way it is. I wasn’t mad nor felt that it needed to be extended; in fact, if it was extended, it would probably be too long.

Anyways, the female lead in this drama is Young-ju. She’s a former soldier who now works at a liquor company, and she and her business partner have been sent out into the field to scope out a new potential brewer. Turns out that’s our male lead: Min-ju.

He’s technically the CEO of his own brewery, and he’s got some talent to match his looks. However, when Young-ju’s company comes to talk to him about selling his liquor, he’s resistant at first to what they have to say.

It’s Young-ju’s persistence, as she literally refuses to go away and helps out in the field, that ultimately convinces him they’re not going to steal his liquor and/or take advantage of him.

That said, there’s also another reason: underneath her slightly hard exterior, Young-ju’s as soft as a marshmallow. She becomes even more soft as the season progresses and the two eventually begin dating, completely ditching the harder exterior. It doesn’t help that later in the series something tragic happens to her, leading to some emotional scenes where she’s crying on his shoulder.

But back in the early section of the series, these two aren’t dating. The sparks are there, and that story progresses pretty quickly. The first two episodes are honestly the slowest for me overall, and once you get over that small mountain of plot, I feel like it’s pretty smooth riding to the end of the series.

It’s also more of a character study than plot-driven. Sure there are some plot points that appear here and there, with a big incident occurring in episode ten and leading to one last piece of friction, but to me these kind of just happened and we were supposed to watch the characters evolve with these new challenges.

I quite liked that, if we’re going to be honest. The B plots, including one of Young-ju’s coworkers and her former soldier friend who now runs a toast truck, also fit in quite nicely.

I didn’t care for the B plots (I never honestly do when it comes to these kinds of dramas), but I didn’t absolutely despise their existence in this show. Maybe it’s because we didn’t have enough time to dawdle through them for multiple hours.

Overall Thoughts

I honestly quite liked this drama! I was a bit concerned during those first two episodes whether I was going to drop this or not, but once we got past that, I had quite a bit of fun with the show. It’s all about the character development for me, and it felt like these were real people that I could see out in the wild.

I also am a sucker for shows set in the food industry. As someone who dreams of opening my own cafe or food company here in the United States, I love watching food content and reading about food all the time, so I enjoyed how this show was set within the liquor industry. It also made more curious about brewing beer, so I went down that rabbit hole.

All in all, I say this is a solid show in my book. It might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but I had a great time watching it throughout I’d say.

Give it a chance if you’re interested and haven’t watched it already. It might be worth a weekend binge watch if this sounds right up your alley!

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