Category:Drinks 
From Singapore Hotels & Singapore Lifestyle
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In Singapore's heat and humidity, it's important to keep up your fluid intake. Bottled mineral water is widely available and cheap, as are a mouthwatering variety of fruit juices, particularly the ubiquitous lime juice, a sweet, sour, magnificently refreshing drink that acts as a perfect counterbalance to spicy, oily foods. Most Food Courts have a specialist drinks stall offering a huge variety of freshly squeezed juices for S$2 to S$3. There are some unusual drinks, too. Try soy milk (flavoured and natural), chrysanthemum tea and coconut water - sometimes straight from the coconut. There's no excuse for drinking fizzy soft drinks in Singapore.
Unless you go to one of the many chain cafes for your lattes and iced mochas, coffee - or kopi - is drunk strong and sweet. There are several variations: Kopi (coffee with sweet condensed milk), kopi-o (with sugar but no milk), kopi-c (with sugar and evaporated milk) or kopi peng (iced coffee). Tea drinkers should substitute "kopi" with "teh" to get the same results. Teh tarik, a rich, frothy sweet tea that is "pulled" by drawing it from one cup to another, is a popular drink at Malay stalls.
Beer is also widely available and you can usually get it at Hawker Centres or Food Courts, as well as Restaurants. However, alcohol in Singapore is expensive: expect to pay around S$5 a can at a food centre, S$5 to S$6 for a large bottle at a hawker centre or up to S$15 for a pint in a city pub. This is because of hefty government duties on alcohol (S$9.50 per litre of alcohol for wine and S$2.70 for beer). The local brew is Tiger. Guinness and ABC Stout are also popular - mainly because Singaporeans believe it has medicinal value. Foreign beers are becoming increasingly popular with trendy professionals and you'll find Erdinger, Kilkenny, Heineken, Bodingtons, Stella Artois, the Belgian white beer Hoegaarden and many others in fashionable pubs, though expect to pay premium prices. In supermarkets, local and Thai beers are considerably cheaper.
Foreigners (or at least those foreigners who haven't tried Beer Lao yet) regularly cite Tiger as their favourite Asian beer. First brewed in 1932 as a joint venture with Heineken, it's a crisp, refreshing lager that goes perfectly with spicy Singaporean food and is still far and away the most popular beer in the country. If you're flying in or out, make a point of picking up some duty free cans of Tiger Classic, a wonderful, strong, dark brew made with crystal malt. For some mystifying reason, it's not sold in Singapore.
In Chinatown, you'll come across large, polished metal urns (although sometimes just vacuum flasks) at the front of traditional medical halls. Tonic herbal teas (around S$1 per serve) are usually dispensed from these urns. Some teas are sweet; others are unbelievably bitter. All are supposed to be good for you.
