SUIP!

On Friday night, for reasons numerous and uninteresting, I found myself wandering around Green Point’s Cape Quarter, a wonderfully esoteric and weirdly upmarket shopping plaza. It was Argus weekend and my parents were in town. We, along with a group of 15 of my father’s cycling teammates and their wives, were looking for a restaurant that would accommodate a throng of tired Port Elizabethans and shorts-and-slops-wearing Durbanites.

In the folly that ensued outside an Italian restaurant that involved much gesticulating and menu-waving, I ducked off to the Cape Quarter Tops to stock up on some beer for the weekend.

Franchise bottle stores are usually much the same. They stock a limited choice of beer, usually dictated by the whims of their suppliers and an undemanding market, at OK prices. Beers outside of the SAB and Namibian Breweries stables are treated with suspicion, pushed into one corner of the cold room where harlequin arrangements of imported lagers slowly grow stale.

But bottle store chains are beginning to wise up to craft beer. Pick ‘n Pay Liquor stores around Cape Town more often than not now stock beers from Boston Breweries and Jack Black. Some stock a greater range of imported beers from Brewers & Union (sold at much more reasonable prices than at their beer “salon”), Liefmans, Erdinger, and so on. It’s progress, but finding real specialty beers can still be a problem. Although craft beer is intrinsically about locality and range, sometimes it’s nice to find bigger labels from further afield in a convenient spot.

Places like the Cape Quarter Tops fill that need.

Although the liquor-addled appendage of South Africa’s Spar Store of the Year is home to an impressive array of wines and spirits, especially for a franchise store, its craft and imported beer fridge is a host of rather unexpected delights. In addition to local beers from Darling, Robson’s, Jack Black, Mitchell’s and Boston, you’ll find local craft cider from James Mitchell and Eversons, imports from the UK from Young’s, continental European beers from Faxe, Brewers & Union and abbey brewers Maredsous, and a whole lot more. The stock changes regularly; for a South African shop, the amount of choices verges on abundant. As a one-stop place to find a rich selection of beer and cider locally, this store has few rivals.

It feels odd to give praise to a Tops for being an exceptionally good place to shop for beer. But within every chain of stores there’s a need for a flagship, a fulfillment of vision in one place. Having fridges like this one in more chain bottle stores in South Africa would do wonders for our smaller beers in our still-conservative beer-buying culture. I suppose this one is a good start.

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Cape Quarter Tops, Cape Quarter Lifestyle Village, 27 Somerset Road, Cape Town

‘Then on Friday I got this call from a shebeen. They said my rep hadn’t arrived with the beer.’

Chris Barnard shrugs. Eleven years ago he was a simpler man, a Capetonian plastics manufacturer working in Paarden Eiland with a part-time penchant for homebrewing. He’d recently spent a year visiting German hamlets with his soon-to-be wife, indulging in their seemingly endless varieties of small-batch brewed beer. Upon his return to SA, he found local commercial brews to be unpalatable in comparison, so he set up a small brewing operation in his factory’s garage in an attempt to provide himself and his friends with an alternative.

‘I was brewing more than we could drink though,’ he recalls, ‘so I thought, well, let’s sell the excess to the okes working in the factory. I was unlicensed, so there was no duty on it. We were practically giving it to them.’

‘But it turned out these okes were going to my secretary, getting labels from her, and – because the company was called the Boston Bag Company – wrote ‘Boston Breweries’ on the bottles and sold them to shebeens.’

And that’s how Boston Breweries started. Chris suddenly found himself spending four days a week in his factory’s garage in order to directly supply shebeens with his homebrew.

‘I reckoned, well, you’re unlicensed, I’m unlicensed – let’s make beer.’ The story comes easily. He’s proud of his brewery’s genesis.

What officially started as a garage operation with an output of 4 000 litres a month in 2000 is today an 80 000 litre-a-month microbrewery, brewing a dozen or so beers within its walls that are enjoyed throughout SA – and not only in shebeens. But you can tell Chris wasn’t counting on his little project getting so big: the factory floor is a haphazard maze of boilers, fermentation tanks and packaging lines. As such, he recently began applying the classic paradigm of New York City real estate to solve his space issues: grow taller, not broader. He’s cut the tops off his fermentation tanks in a bid to expand their capacity. It’s undeniably the work of a man obsessive about his craft.

In addition to the five Boston-branded beers – of which the fresh, lightly malty Naked Mexican and the caramel-toned kick of the Hazard Ten Ale are most recommended – Barnard’s premises are also the birthplace of beers for both Jack Black Brewery and the increasingly-popular Darling Brewery. But the most exciting development at Boston is undoubtedly the creation of SA’s first commercially-brewed pumpkin ale. Traditionally a North American seasonal, pumpkin ale is a point of contention for new world beer connoisseurs, some of whom argue that they’re too cloying and gimmicky to be taken seriously.

Boston’s Van Hunk’s Pumpkin Ale doesn’t fall into that trap, however. Lightly pumpkin-pie sweet and satisfyingly bitter, its rich veins of nutmeg, coriander and cinnamon create a sprightly and aromatic ale that’s bound to appeal to enthusiasts and more tentative drinkers alike. Admittedly, it might not sell so well in shebeens, but it certainly sets the bar for more innovation from Cape Town’s resident plastics manufacturer-cum-chief brewer.

‘I just think it’s a cool beer,’ he says, shrugging again, equal parts resigned and content.

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This piece was originally written for GQ.co.za, and is viewable here.

Since when did you see a label that clean and pretty? Nicely considered and good looking both inside and out, Johnny Gold, Boston Breweries’ take on the hefeweizen, is a slightly sweet, uncomplicated beer that’s sure to appeal to people not usually so keen on weiss.

Pouring dark gold with a healthy but quickly dissipating off-white head, Johnny Gold looks good from the outset. With plenty of banana on the nose, you’d expect a lot of sweetness. It delivers.

Sweet from banana notes and slightly bitter from citrus zest, cloves and just a dash of what tastes a lot like peppercorns, Johnny Gold is a really pleasing beer. Medium bodied and softly carbonated, it finishes surprisingly long and strong, but never overly bitter.

Like its label, it’s clean cut, pretty and simple. Much the same as Darling’s Bone Crusher, the other weiss brewed at Boston Breweries’ premises, it’s crisp and refreshing. While I’d recommend both beers for a good summer weiss, I’d recommend you try Boston’s over Darling’s if you weren’t such a huge weiss fan, even though Bone Crusher is a firm favourite for weiss lovers, including myself. Johnny Gold is just somehow lighter and a tad more cheery. I can see it appealing to those people (who there are a lot of, in my experience) who usually don’t like local weiss.

Drink this with seafood or anything deep fried. It cleans the palate well.

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Boston Breweries Johnny Gold Weiss Beer; 550ml bottle; 5% a.b.v.

Pros: crisp and good looking; sweet and refreshing.

Cons: might be a bit uninteresting to the serious weiss lover.