The impoverished state best known for its communist propaganda and sabre-rattling has quietly been brewing one of the highest-quality beers on the Korean peninsula for several years.

But due to the North's poor infrastructure, limited trading links and minimal skills in the capitalist world, its Taedonggang beer is likely to remain a little-known product.

North Korea's quest to produce decent beer began in earnest in 2000 when it started talks with Britain's Ushers brewery about acquiring its Trowbridge, Wiltshire, plant that had ceased operations.

Ushers was a Scottish company who started out in the mid-19th century in Edinburgh as Thomas Usher & Son Ltd.

The North Koreans took apart the brewery that had been producing ales for about 150 years, shipped it piece by piece to Pyongyang and reassembled it under the banner of its Taedonggang Beer factory.

By April 2002, it was up and running. In June 2002, the North's leader, Kim Jong-il, known for his fondness of expensive brandy and wines, went on a brewery tour.

"Watching good-quality beer coming out in an uninterrupted flow for a long while, he noted with great pleasure that it has now become possible to supply more fresh beer to people in all seasons," North Korea's official KCNA news agency said.

Taedonggang beer, named for a river that runs through Pyongyang, is a full-bodied lager a little on the sweet side, with a slightly bitter aftertaste.

A few critics who have sampled it in Pyongyang say it is a highly respectable, but not award-winning brew.

The beer was available in Seoul until last year, and foreigners say it is infinitely superior to the mass-marketed beers in South Korea.

At a Pyongyang hotel for foreigners, where goods are overpriced across the board, a 640ml bottle of Taedonggang sells for 37p. On tap, the beer is a golden to burnt orange in colour with a clean, white foam.

Taedonggang is one of several brews in North Korea and it has quickly become the top brand, according to foreigners living in the reclusive country.

Park Myung-jin, of distributor Vintage Korea which used to sell the beer in the South, said the North's leader wanted a showpiece brewery.

"They used the best-quality material without thinking of the production cost," Mr Park said. He stopped selling the beer in the South in 2007 due largely to a sudden price rise. The North taps into overseas markets for ingredients, he said. It has abundant supplies of fresh water because its archaic factories do not produce enough to cause pollution problems.

But beer is not the drink of choice for most North Koreans, who prefer cheaper rice-based liquor that packs a big punch.

"They need to be able to drink more at the same price," said Choi Soo-young, an expert on the North and its regime at the South's Korea Institute for National Unification.

Ms Choi said the brewery is a favourite project of the ruling Communist Party, whose members can afford beer and will make sure the factory receives all the ingredients it needs, even though the North cannot produce enough food to feed its 22 million people.

A North Korean defector, Jong Su-ban, who came to the South in 2000, said that impoverished farmers would scrounge for anything they could find to concoct their own home brews.

"We found cornflour and hops and made something that came out a weird milky colour," Mr Jong said. "At least it was fizzy like beer."

But do not expect to see Taedonggang or any North Korean beer invading the overseas markets any time soon. North Korea may have solved the riddle of making a robust beer, but it has not completely solved the problem of bottling it.

The brewery has occasional trouble sealing bottles properly and the glass it uses is fragile. The transport system in North Korea is also a mess, making it unlikely that the beer can become one of the few legitimate exports from a country shunned by the developed world for its defiant pursuit of nuclear weapons and a human rights record frequently cited as one of the world's worst.

The distributor, Mr Park, said he had to print labels in the South and send bottles from China in order to package the beer for export.

Even though he no longer sells the beer, Mr Park is still a fan.

"The taste is superb," he said.

TRULY, HE IS A LEGEND IN HIS OWN LUNCHTIME

KIM Jong-il is known for his high-living. South Korean media obsess about the appearance of the leader of their unpredictable neighbour – with special attention given to the size of Kim's paunch.

It is regarded as having shrunk in recent years, but stories about his dietary excesses rife.

Kim's former chef, Kenji Fujimoto, who fled to his native Japan after 13 years working for the man known to his people as "Dear Leader", has written how Kim loves sushi, Iranian caviar and shark-fin soup. He is said to have every grain of rice inspected for perfection.

This in a country that cannot feed its own people.

After dinner, he often enjoys a glass of the finest cognac – his budget for Hennessy has been put at up to £400,000 a year.