If beer festivals were wine festivals…

South Africa’s beer culture is young. It is not a nation that’s new to drinking beer by any means, but savouring beer, appreciating beer as something other than a beverage to glug with the cricket or to douse the summer heat – this is still a fairly new concept to a lot of people. And why wouldn’t it be? Until recently, only one style of beer was widely available and the marketing around it largely recommended it as a pairing for rugby or braais and not much more.

Things are changing and changing rapidly, but for every festival-goer who sniffs their brew before they sip, there’s someone who treats the amber nectar with a hint of disdain. While I wouldn’t want beer festivals to lose their laid-back, friendly vibe, there are times when I wish beer was given just a little of the respect that wine seems to automatically receive in South Africa. For if people approached the exhibitors at wine festivals the way they often do the beer guys, here are some of the things you’d likely hear being said:

1. “Thank you for not adding black pepper to your wine”

Got anything that doesn't taste like wine

At the second Cape Town Festival of Beer in 2011, I heard almost this very sentence uttered, but ‘black pepper’ was substituted for ‘granadilla’ and instead of wine, the customer was of course talking about beer. But just in the way that producers of Shiraz don’t dump crates of peppercorns into their spicy wines, that granadilla aroma is not coming from added fruit. Beer’s ingredients emit all manner of aromas and flavours – grass, coffee, toffee, banana – but it doesn’t mean everyone if throwing grass cuttings and banana peel into their beers, just as winemakers don’t add blackcurrants, gooseberries or cat pee to their tanks. Of course, many brewers do add fruit or herbs, but next time you’re wondering how a beer got its flavour, ask the person pulling your pint rather than whispering behind their backs and turning your nose up at anything with flavour.

2. “Give me whatever tastes the most like Drostdy-Hof”

Do people go to wine events looking for a wine that’s as similar as possible to the house red they make do with in their local? Do they hunt around for vintages that challenge the palate as little as possible? Do they turn their nose up at anyone who’s trying to produce a bold wine, at any wine that emits a unique or memorable flavour? Because some people do exactly that at beer festivals. The next time you ask a brewer to pour you a taster of whatever tastes the most like [insert your preferred mass-produced lager here] – a request that’s all too common at beer events – consider the work that’s gone into the beer they’ve brewed. A recipe has been developed, ingredients have perhaps been sourced from around the world and the beer has been lovingly nurtured over a period of weeks, maybe even months. If you’re going to ask for a beer that tastes like your favourite pale lager, you might as well be dropping ice cubes in this hand-crafted brew and mixing it with coke.

Hmm, that looks a bit aley for me

3. “I don’t like red wine, rosé or anything that tastes like wood”

If you head to a beer stand professing your hatred for ales, weissbiers and stouts before you’ve even looked at the beers available, you may want to ask yourself why you paid to get in in the first place. To start with, weissbiers and stouts are ales, but that’s not the point. To say that you don’t like ales is such an absurd generalisation, it doesn’t actually warrant a reply. Ale isn’t just a pint of ‘warm flat beer’ (in fact it should never be either of those things) – it’s a brewing style that incorporates more than 60 incarnations according to BJCP guidelines. An ale can be almost as light and easy-drinking as a pale lager, it can taste like pumpkin pie or cherries. It could be full bodied and full of rum ‘n’ raisin flavours or bubbly and refreshing with hints of fruit or spice. Of course, if you don’t like beer that tastes like toffee, treacle or tropical fruits, like coriander or coffee, like biscuit or bananas, beer that’s lightly carbonated or full-on fizzy, beer that’s sour, sweet, bitter or dry, that’s full-bodied and warming or light and refreshing, well, maybe you just don’t like ale. Might I recommend a wine festival next time around?

 Heard anything disrespectful said about your favourite malt ‘n’ hops-based beverage?Share it in the comments section below.

This post was first published on The Craft Beer Project.

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