2013 Cape Town Festival of Beer
Beer boffins and festival fans turned out in their droves again this year for the fourth annual Cape Town Festival of Beer – at least on the Saturday. Friday was, as ever, the domain of the true beer geeks (and the lucky few who don’t have to work on weekdays)...
Beer 101 – staff training session
Know your wine but baffled about beer? As craft beer continues to sweep South Africa, bars and restaurants are bulking up their beer lists, offering more hops, more variety, and more options for food pairings. And as beer gets bigger, the beer consumer becomes more...
Five ways to piss off a beer snob
If you’re in any way interested in the South African beer scene, it can’t have escaped your notice that we are living in an age of abundant festivals. For a while it seemed that hardly a weekend could go by when there wasn’t a beer event of some sort taking place....
Contract Brewing in South Africa
If you’re an uber beer nerd, you might have laughed raucously over a video recently doing the rounds, focusing on a group of beer snobs making increasingly douchebag-like comments about the beers they’re tasting. I can call them this because I too am a beer douche....
Five strictly South African beers
I was going to go down the braai route for the September 24th public holiday, offering beer ‘n’ braai food pairings and asking for your favourite beers to sip with skilpadjies, boerewors and burgers. Then I remembered that September 24th is actually Heritage Day,...
Talk like a pirate, drink like a pirate
If ye, like me, be a Pastafarian, ye’ll be knowing that Septembarrrrr 19th be a special day in the log book. It be International Talk Like a Pirate Day, when we honour our fallen seafarin’ mateys an’ the efforts they made t’ slow down global warrrming. By way o’...
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...
Free beer on the first Friday of every month
The first time I wrote about SAB’s monthly horse-drawn beer delivery, I was a mere bystander in the proceedings. In fact I turned up late and just managed to see a horse’s ass disappearing along Newlands Avenue as I sat down to my wood-fired pizza at Forries. Well...
Eight things I’m sick of hearing about beer
Before I start on my latest rant, I must make something clear. The vast majority of my friends are, in some way, involved in the beer industry. Virtually every ‘work’ meeting I have is held at Banana Jam Cafe, most social engagements involve lengthy discussions...