Cape Town = Craft Town

I recently visited my girlfriend who is on an internship in Cape Town, South Africa. Whilst there, I couldn't resist doing a little bit of beer discovering, well at least as much as my girlfriend would allow anyway.

The following is my experience with the craft beer scene in Cape Town (CPT), in the few days that I was there.

Cape Town = Craft Town!

1. The Scene

I really had no idea on what to expect, in terms of beer, in CPT.

My first experience with CPT Craft beer, Firebird IPA !

However, I was soon to be pleasantly surprised. What became apparent very quickly was that each bar and restaurant we visited had, at least, a choice between a number of different brews.

Off course this included a selection of different lagers both local and international (always good to have a choice), with the apparent flagship lager "Castle" being available pretty much everywhere.

Enjoying a Castle Lager

But apart from having a selection of different lagers, most restaurants and bars provided a selection of local craft beer, which is awesome. Furthermore, most beer is served in pint or large glasses, including craft beer. This in combination with relatively low prices compared to what im used to in Europe, this gives you plenty of 'bang for your buck'.

Enjoying a Passionate Blond, with some seafood 

But craft beer in pint glasses, isn't that way too much? No, not really. If Russian imperial stouts or barley wines were commonplace, and those were served in pint glasses, I would wholeheartedly agree. But, based on my experience, the majority of local brews are represented by low ABV, fresh styles such as IPA's, Blonde's, Golden Ales, Pale Ales and a few Stouts/Milk Stouts here and there.

Beer Bar at Old Biscuit Mill Food Market

Craft beer also has a presence at events apparently. When visiting the Old Biscuit Mill food market, there were two craft beer bars (one pictured above), and a bottle shop selling chilled wines and craft beer.

Enjoying a Butcher Block Pale Ale to go from the bottle shop

In terms of availability craft beer is everywhere in Cape Town, most bars and restaurants have a selection of both lagers and craft on their menu's, although the menu's were not very extensive, they usually did provide a nice choice of locally crafted brews. Moreover, I also encountered a pub which had their own brew (but as often is the case, I expect it was brewed by someone else).

Drinking Tiger's Milk at Tiger's Milk

What I didn't encounter was imported craft beer on any of the menus, but since I was there to try local, that was fine by me.

2. The Breweries

Cape Town has a number of different breweries, some of which are open for visits!

In the few days visiting my girlfriend in CPT, I visited 2 breweries, or one and a half, i'm not really sure...

The first brewery I visited was Devils Peak Brewing Company, aptly named after Devil's Peak mountain which is close by.

Devils Peak Brewing Co

Starting as a brewery in 2012, and when demand outstripped supply, moving to the location featured above, Devils Peak is now a full fledged brewery and pub, or brewpub.

Brewery and Bar

And since this was a one time visit, it was tasting paddle time!

Tasting 7 Devil's Peak brews, with a view of Devil's Peak!

Originally, the tasting paddles include 5 DP brews, but as our kind waiter pointed out, i was also able to get 7 tasting glasses including their new experimental brews. As the only real option was to order all 7, I did just that, and i wasn't disappointed.

Like I had encountered so far, the tasting paddle included popular CPT styles such as lager, IPA, Golden Ale and Pale Ale. These tasted fine, but it was DP's more experimental brews which really stood out for me.

The first was the Whiskey Tango Foxtrot (WTF) stout, my first bourbon barrel aged local brew in CPT. The second being the grapefruit express, a grapefruit IPA and the best IPA I had in my few days in Cape Town. The last, and probably my favourite beer of the whole trip, was the Vin de Saison. A farmhouse ale which was infused with South African Chenin Blanc, giving a nice dry, sourish, acidic, fruity flavour!

Mitchells Brewery Tasting Paddle 

That night we stumbled upon an ale house which had five taps dedicated to one brewery, Mitchells. When I asked the waitress for a what she would recommend, she told me to get a tasting paddle of 'our own beers', so not being one to pass up such excellent advice I decided to order said tasting paddle. This tasting paddle was very traditional, including styles such as bitter, pale, lager, imperial lager and honey ale.

I later discovered this was in fact not the brewery, although there was plenty of space in the back for it to be one, but a brewery pub outlet. But, still nice to try a whole selection of local brews.

3. The Stores

As craft beer was so widely available in terms of bars, restaurants and breweries, it came as no surprise that a number of bottle shops and specialty stores also followed this trend.

Bottle Shop

Bottle shops sold a wide variety of different brews, mostly local, and some import from the larger craft brewers (or macro owned brands) such as Brewdog or Duvel. But, one of the biggest surprises in terms of craft beer came when I expected it least: at the local SPAR supermarket, around the corner from where I was staying.

Surprise!

As we finished doing some groceries, I noticed that the supermarket had a seemingly small bottle shop attached to it. What I found inside blew me away, the above picture doesn't do it justice as it only shows about half the brews available.

The shop, apart from selling a wide variety of local brews, sold internationally acclaimed craft brews such as Brewdog Tokyo Black and a wide variety of import beer for very good prices. Moreover, it was very surprising to see quite a number of Dutch breweries (me being Dutch), such as de Molen and Hertog Jan, represented.

-

As the purpose of my trip was really not about beer, it was really nice to see so much of the craft beer scene in Cape Town in such little time. I'm sure I missed out on some great breweries, pubs, shops or other beer related things, leaving plenty of more things to be discovered in this great city. If you havent already, I highly recommend checking out craft beer in CPT if you're there!

Cheers!

Beer Style Discovery: Barley Wine

Beer Style: Barley Wine

No, this is not a blog about wine..

Barley Wine, like the Quadrupel or Imperial stout, often represents pinnacle of a breweries arsenal.

But where does this fancy sounding beer style come from?

The earliest known origins of the style come from ancient Greece, where a barley wine beverage (also referred to as barley wine) was apparently quite popular. As hops weren't yet being used to brew beer, these early barley wines were based on fermented grain.

Early Barley Wine Advertisement

The modern variant of Barley wine, which we know and love today, has its origins in 19th century Britain. The first usage of the name "barley wine" was by Bass & Co, at the end of the century. Marketed as a "royal" tonic or beverage, the style often represented the more expensive and high class beer style.

The reasons for this were twofold: Firstly, the original process for creating barley wine was the traditional method of using single mash or wort for all the beers. This meant that the first beers brewed were the strongest, darkest, and with the most flavour. As the mash was used again and again, consequent brews became lighter both in colour and alcohol percentage. Barleywine was exclusively made from the very first mash running by Bass & Co.

Some more early advertisement 

Secondly, due to its high alcohol percentage (traditionally around 11%) the style often suffered from alcohol based taxation, meaning: more alcohol = more tax. This resulted in the cases where such taxation was present, that the beer was significantly more expensive than other brews (something which is often still the case today).

Enjoying an English style Barley Wine

The 'original' British barley wine style is characterised by a balanced flavour between malts and hops,  fruity and sweet, with a varying alcohol percentage (usually between 7-12% ABV). But, as is the case with several beer styles, the United States has its own variant.

The American style contains significantly more hop, resulting in more bitterness and pronounced flavours. This variant is often also more lightly coloured. Anchor Brewing Company was the first US brewer to brew the style, which resulted in 'Old Foghorn Barleywine Style Ale'

Enjoying the original US Barleywine: Old Foghorn

You might have noticed that the Anchor Brewing Company also changed the style name somewhat, from Barley Wine to Barleywine Style Ale. At the time, the brewers were afraid that if they used the original style name 'barley wine', that the word wine would displease and scare away potential customers.

So there you have it, the origins of the brew sometimes referred to as the 'wine of beers'. If you havent already, give this great (and dangerously strong) beer style a try!

Cheers!

How to: Eisbock

After having seen numerous posts on both Facebook and on other blogs about eisbocking, I decided to give it a try!

But before I start rambling on about my own attempt at eisbocking, ill give you guys a short summary about what eisbocking is. 

Eisbock is actually one of the rarer beer styles out there, whilst not brewed it is made by using existing beer as a base. Due to the fact that it really takes quite a lot of beer to create a relatively small amount of eisbock, not many breweries craft it, which is a shame. 

Enjoying Aventinus Eisbock

Ive only come across a few of them over the last couple of years, including the awesome tasting brew displayed above. 

Funnily enough, the process for creating eisbock (ice-bock) is really quite simple. The whole process revolves around freezing strong beer and then fractionally melting it, so that the concentrate is removed from the water. This results, if done well, in a version of the original beer which is up to two times as strong, and has accentuated flavours! 

So I gave this a try, and I was very happy with the results!

Rochefort 10 as the base beer

It takes around three bottles of base beer to create one bottle of eisbock. I decided to use rochefort 10 as my base beer, as this is a very robust quadruple with great complexity and flavours (something which I was eager to see accentuated). Moreover, with its 11.5% ABV, it would create a hell of a strong beer.

Step 1: pour three 33cl bottles into a 1.5l plastic bottle

The first step is to pour all three beers into a clean 1.5l plastic bottle, this might take a while as some beers will have a tendency foam. (if you use less bottles, a smaller bottle also works, just make sure to leave some space)

Letting the foam settle a bit

After filling the bottle with the base beer, put the cap back on the bottle and store it in a freezer.

Ice ice baby

After about 24 hours (more or less, depending on your freezer), the bottle will be sufficiently frozen, whilst the alcohol will still be liquid (as that freezes only at around -100 degrees celsius). The next step is the most complicated in this very simple process: 

Drip Drip

Remove the cap, and place the bottle upside down into something which can collect the concentrate dripping out, i used half of a different plastic bottle to achieve this, it created an air tight reservoir and provided enough stability for the bottle to stay upright (with a little help from my kitchen wall). 

Eisbocking in action!

At this point in the process, the environment in which it takes place is very important. Temperature influences how much eisbocked beer you can get out of the bottle. The best place for conducting this step would be to place the bottle and reservoir in the fridge, but if like me there really isn't much space there, the kitchen counter makes for a good replacement. 

You should never extract more than 33cl from the plastic bottle, in order to prevent too much water from diluting the eisbock. I eisbocked my beer on a particularly warm day, and as such i could only extract around 20cl, as the water in the bottle started melting quite quickly, so stop process if you start seeing clear water droplets. 

The result!

After extracting the concentrate, refill one of the (cleaned) original bottles, place the cap back on, and refrigerate. After all this work i was off course very eager to try my own eisbock!

Delicious!

Sweet, sirupy, bitter, spiced, and damn strong! Thats how I would describe the taste of the rochefort 10 eisbock, and with around 20% alcohol, it really gives a kick!

I was surprised at how easy the process was, and how awesome the result! I will definitely do some more eisbocking in the future, and experiment with different base beers and with the adding of additional ingredients.

Thanks for reading, and until next time!

Cheers!

-UPDATES-

I have since made the following Eisbocks:

(13/10/16) 2x Chimay Bleue, 1x Kasteel Rouge Eisbock Blend (Cherries, sweet, syrup, alc), I liked this one better than the Rochefort eisbock.

(15/11/16) 3x Piraat Strong Belgian Pale Ale Eisbock. Didnt know what to expect with this one, I felt like some experimentation. The sweetness became more pronounced, and the bitterness was accentuated, an oke Eisbock but nothing special

(06/02/17) 3x Brand Dubbelbock and Red Pepper Eisbock. This was the first time I added extra ingredients to the eisbock blend, and I was pleasantly surprised at how it turned out. The sweetness of the Bock was greatly accentuated and the spicyness of the red pepper really came to the fore, a fun little addition and something I will be using again sometime in the future.

(17/03/17) 3x Bulldog IPA Eisbock. My first foray into eisbocking IPA. Transformation into a strong, syrupy, thick imperial IPA monster. Sweetness and bitterness definitely more pronounced. Since I have about 15 bottles left of this brew, im most likely going to experiment some more with additional ingredients.

BrewBarrel Brewing

Brewing with a BrewBarrel!

As some of you might have noticed, I have never posted anything about me brewing my own beer.

And that has a good reason, I never have.....Until now!

Well, sort of..

The BrewBarrel

I recently hosted my birthday party, whoohoo, and one of the presents i received was the above displayed BrewBarrel. Having zero experience in terms of hands on brewing, and usually just being on the consumption side of the wonderful world of beer, i was quite excited to give this barrel a go!

The Barrel and its "ingredients" 

The BrewBarrel comes with brewing "ingredients", as everything included (except perhaps the yeast) looks nothing like the real deal.  The large bottle next to the keg is full of Malt extract, the small bottle with Hop extract, and the small package next to it is full of yeast.

This really makes the BrewBarrel the simplest and easiest home brew package, which was totally OK, since I had zero experience with brewing. Below i will show the steps i took to create my first "home-brew" beer!

Filling the keg with Malt extract

Adding a mix of cold and hot water

 After this very challenging step of adding some water, the keg had to be shaken for about 30 seconds.  Afterward, the Keg had to be filled with 5 bottles of water (the used Malt extract bottle).

Adding the "hops"

Adding the YeastieBoys

 After the "hops" and the yeast were added, the Keg had to be pressure sealed using the included pressure control valve. Closing off the Keg with this valve almost made me break my thumb, "it can be  little bit rough to get the valve into the hole" as it is stated in the instruction manual is a bit of an understatement.

And Done! 

After the keg was sealed, it had to be stored away. This whole brewing process only took about 10 minutes. Off course some after-care was necessary: after 24 hours the keg had to be turned upside down for a bit to vitalise the yeast. Then after about 5 days of chilling out, or fermenting, the keg had to chill out some more in the fridge (about two days).

Now for the fun part: actually trying the end product!

Fingers Crossed!

After figuring out how the tap handle worked, and tapping away a whole bunch of foam, the moment of truth had finally arrived. Having seen the "ingredients", especially the Malt extract, i didn't exactly have high hopes for my first brew.

Looks Nice!

Therefore i was pleasantly surprised when the beer was not only drinkable, it tasted kind of nice! I invited over some friends and we drank the 5 liters of "home-brewed" beer!

A fun first experience with brewing, next i will try a more advanced brewing kit!

Cheers!

Beer Style Discovery: Gose

Beer Style: Gose

Gose! Its being hailed my many brewers and brew drinkers as the new, and exciting, craft beer style. Much like IPA before, many breweries have started brewing their own variants of this style.

But what is it, and where does it come from?

Old Gose Advertisement Poster

As you may have discerned from the poster above, our German friends were the ones to first brew the style called Gose, around a 1000 years ago to be exact...

On the banks of the river Gose, in a town called Goslar, Gose was first introduced (presumably by someone lacking name creativity). At the time, the town of Goslar was an important mining center and enjoyed great economic prosperity.

As the town's economy declined, the brewing of Gose moved to the city of Leipzig, where the beer style flourished further. At its height, in the early 1900's, Leipzig counted over 80's Gose breweries and it had become the regions most popular beer style.

Gose Brewery

Goes enjoyed great regional popularity, but never really expanded out of the Leipzig region. It is for this reason that, in the early 20th century, the style slowly faded away due to the world wars, the subsequent cold war, communist regime, and the erection of the Berlin wall.


When the wall came down, and Germany was reunified, Gose started slowly making  comeback. In recent years, Gose has experienced a tremendous growth in popularity, with many craft brewers making their own versions of the style. Some have even started jokingly referring to it as the "new IPA" in terms of hype and explosive popularity.

Enjoying an Anderson Valley Gose

Gose is a sour, and slightly salty, tasting ale. Salty? yes, Gose tastes a little salty as it is traditionally brewed with slightly salty water, giving it its unique taste. Many different varieties of Gose, from all over the world, are available today.

Enjoying a Jopen Coastal Gose

If you havent tried it already, be sure to give this ancient yet popular beer style a try!

Cheers!


Sources:

Burnsed, J (2011). Brew a Gose. Brew Your Own. Retrieved from: http://byo.com/hops/item/2349-gose

German Beer Institute (2006) Gose. The German Beer Institute. Retrieved from: http://www.germanbeerinstitute.com/Gose.html

Brewery Discovery: Kompaan

Brewery: Kompaan
City: The Hague
Country: The Netherlands

Last week i headed over for a great brew filled couple of days to the Hague, the Netherlands. The first thing which contributed to these "great brew filled days" was a visit to the Kompaan Bier/Beer Brewery.

Kompaan Bier Brewery and Bar

The visit was wholly spontaneous, I google mapped my friends place (where i was staying over this particular weekend) to see if there were any interesting breweries or bars around, and saw that this brewery was quite close by. Having tried a number of their beers, and always being up for a Brewery visit, this seemed like a great way to spend the late afternoon!

The Kompaan brewery is located in quite an industrial area, and without knowing that its there you would probably never run into it (except if you are working in the industrial area off course). The brewery is located on an industrial wharf, and is surrounded by operational factories. In my opinion, a very cool place for a craft beer bar and brewery!

Kompaan Bar & Friend

As you can see in the picture above (and those to come) the brewery and bar incorporate their industrial surroundings into their interior design.

Plenty of Choice!

Apart from the 20 beers on tap, which is a mix between their own brews and those of other breweries, the bar also has a few bottled beers on offer.

Enjoying a Kompaan India Pale Lager!

Moreover, the bar also serves a number of snacks and food options, including home made beer mustard and syrup (which happened to be the best syrup i have ever tasted!). A small note here though, you can only pay by card as cash is not accepted at Kompaan.

Enjoying a cheese platter with beer mustard and syrup!

The brewery and bar are run by two friends, Jasper and Jeroen. The brewery was formally located in a small industrial warehouse, but due to sharp increases in demand (and the wish to add a bar to the brewery) the brewery moved to its current location, a larger warehouse close to the original brewery.

Wise Words

However, due to unforeseen issues with starting up at the new location, the majority of their beer is currently being brewed in Germany (something which was already being done to a certain extent when demand was outstripping the ability to supply at the old location).

Brewery Tour

At the current location there is some small batch brewing going on, and there are a number of beers being barrel aged. Fortunately, the issues which are plaguing the brewery are close to being resolved and it is expected that Kompaan will start brewing all their beer at the current location around September.

Space for a brewery

Barrel Ageing Goodness

If you are in the area, the Kompaan Brewery and Bar are a great place to visit! Friendly staff, good food and some nice brews!

Cheers!