Careful man, there’s a beverage here

Right, first up, let’s address the name of this beer. The beer is a collaboration between Cape Town’s Afro Caribbean Brewing Company and Terrapin Beer Co from Atlanta, USA. The founder and brewmaster at Terrapin Beer, Brian Buckowski (better known to all as Spike), is good friends with Afro Caribbean owner Greg Casey and was recently in Cape Town for a holiday – and a collab brew.

Spike – a good man, and thorough – wanted proper South African flair in the beer and so the idea to use buchu was born. And also, I assume, one or the other of them is fond of Geoff Bridges’ finest film, The Big Lebowski. 

So then, the beer. I liked it. But if you’re not into the whole brevity thing, here’s a bit more detail.

The Big Buchukowski is a hazy IPA infused with buchu. If you’re not familiar with buchu, it’s a fragrant form of fynbos that’s been used in traditional medicine for generations, and is also used in cooking. The SA Fynbos website calls it “the most sensational of all the Fynbos herbs”. It is all at the same time minty, eucalyptus-like and blackcurranty and is perhaps best described as potent. A little bit of this goes a long way.

The first time I tasted buchu in a beer I had been in South Africa for about two weeks and I had never heard of buchu. It was a homebrew club meeting and the beer tasted like it had been infused with Vicks VapoRub. I didn’t know what buchu was, but felt it had no place in beer. Over the years I have been slowly convinced otherwise. When used in moderation, and in the right beer style, it can really tie the room together.

There’s no point calling a beer The Big Buchukowski if the buchu isn’t front and centre, and indeed when you take a deep sniff of this beer it’s almost all buchu all the way. But it doesn’t clear your sinuses in the way that over-dosed homebrew once did. It still manages to be recognisable as a beer, and once you sip, to still be recognisable as an IPA. It has flavours of blackcurrant and coconut and a bit of bitterness that helps cut through the full body.

It’s quite a rich beer, and for me a lighter body would have helped with drinkability. That’s not to say that it isn’t drinkable, but it’s not a beer you consume by the pint. In fact, this is a great food beer. At the launch it was served with a bruschetta topped with artichoke humus, mint and parmesan, which worked quite nicely (and you have to love the mini food pairings every time Afro Caribbean launches a new beer). Even better though would be something fragrant and coconutty. I’ve kept a can in my fridge and am planning to pair it with a Thai green curry. It would also do well with dessert – I’m thinking Asian rice pudding with coconut milk and cardamom.

If you’ve never had buchu in a beer (or otherwise) you should definitely grab a can and give it a try. It won’t be for everyone but it’s a brave attempt at a tricky ingredient and the constant innovation from this brewery should be applauded.

But that’s just, like, my opinion man.