Beer Safari: A journey through the craft breweries of South Africa, by Lucy Corne.

Beer Safari: A journey through the craft breweries of South Africa, by Lucy Corne. Penguin Random House South Africa, Struik Lifestyle. Cape Town, South Africa 2015. ISBN 9781432304867 / ISBN 978-1-4323-0486-7

Beer Safari: A journey through the craft breweries of South Africa, beautifully presented and drenched in beer-lover and travel writer Lucy Corne’s infectious enthusiasm, features interviews with both established and emerging brewers, tasting notes and forthcoming launches.

Lucy Corne  

THE RENAISSANCE OF SOUTH AFRICAN BEER

Mitchell's Brewery was ahead of its time. It launched in a small town far from major urban centres in a country of staunch lager lovers. So when Lex Mitchell opened his microbrewery - South Africa's oldest - in 1983, he did what any smart brewer would do. He launched with a lager. It wasn't quite the lager that people were used to - a little hazier, a little less fizzy - but he gave South African beer drinkers something familiar, garnering trust in his pint-sized Garden Route brewery. But companions on the small-scale brewing scene were slow to emerge and for almost a decade, Mitchell's flew the flag solo, gradually trying to add a little ale to all that lager. When microbrewed beer would finally take off, almost three decades later, the new wave of brewers would follow the same strategy, wooing long-time lager drinkers with something familiar before weaning them on to ales that were darker, fruitier, hoppier or heavier. Other breweries came and went, KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) had a flourishing beer scene for a while, but many of its early ale houses, Wartburger Brauhaus, Farmers' Brewery, the Luyt Brewery - have long since closed. It wasn't until the mid-nineties that a few longstanding names emerged - names that could well be familiar to you today. In Pretoria, Moritz Kallmeyer founded Drayman's. In the KZN Midlands, Nottingham Road opened its doors. Birkenhead quietly launched in the pretty Overberg village of Stanford, while a little later Cape Town got its first new brewery in centuries in the form of Boston. Each stayed afloat serving those in the immediate catchment area, but most people had no idea there were microbreweries in their midst - or even what a microbrewery was. Fast-forward a decade or so and suddenly they were everywhere. Breweries began to pop up in the unlikeliest locations - from far-flung farms to industrial districts, wedged in between steel manufacturers and machinery merchants. The latest braai accessory became a six-pack of microbrewed beer and whether they were cooking with it, brewing it, serving it or just drinking it, everyone wanted a piece of what has become known as 'the craft beer revolution'. Craft beer - that is, beer produced on a much smaller scale than South Africa was used to - has certainly arrived. The question is, where did it come from? Varying theories circulate as to what sparked this beer renaissance. Was it an imported trend, inevitably reaching our borders at last? Was it the work of a few forward-thinking business brains? Or part of a larger trend towards getting back to basics where consumables were concerned? It was all of these. By the time craft beer really began to take off around 2010 or 2011, a similar scene had existed in the United States of America for more than two decades. This hankering for hops had bubbled over and spread to the United Kingdom, to Australia, to New Zealand and Italy, South Korea and Scandinavia, Germany and Japan, so it was really just a matter of time before it would wash up on South African shores as well. But a rebirth of beer was never going to happen by itself. [...]

This is an excerpt from the beer book Beer Safari: A journey through the craft breweries of South Africa, by Lucy Corne.

Title: Beer Safari
Subtitle: Delectable vanilla, caramel, chocolate and fruit treats
Author: Lucy Corne
Publisher: Penguin Random House South Africa
Imprint: Struik Lifestyle
Cape Town, South Africa 2015
ISBN 9781432304867 / ISBN 978-1-4323-0486-7
Softcover, 19 x 25 cm, 256 pages, 250 photographs