There’s a lot of talk about craft beer across South Africa at the moment, and wonderful talk it is. Never have there been more beers available around the country and the increasingly avid beer culture means that speciality beers are also being imported from overseas. So with all these new beers on the block it’s easy to forget that in Cape Town there sits the grandfather of beer in SA; to quote a Disney advert from my youth, the “˜One that started it all’ and no true beer enthusiast should miss out on a tour on the site of the country’s oldest commercial brewery.
Tours of the Newlands Brewery start with a dose of history in the former malt house, featuring excellent info panels for those seeking a deeper look into the roots of beer in South Africa. From here you head into the fully functioning brewery to follow the brewing process from mash tun to kettle to fermenter. All tours are guided and the commentary is filled with facts quirky enough that even the brainiest beer boffin can’t fail to learn something new.
Once you’ve tasted some malt, sniffed some hops and peeped into the steaming kettles to see beer in progress, it’s time to see the factory side of things as you follow the cycle of a quart as it is returned, sanitised, de-labelled, filled, capped and re-labelled. Watching the thousands of bottles trundle by on various conveyor belts is as intoxicating as drinking what’s inside them, but luckily there is something to draw you away from the hypnosis. Tours end in the on-site pub, a delightful underground bar usually reserved for staff and as you sip your pair of pints that come free with the tour you can’t help wondering how you might finagle some kind of career in beer just so this could be your five o’clock hangout.
Brewery tours are available weekdays at 10h00, 12h00 and 14h00 and Saturdays at 10h00 and cost R30 per person. Bookings are essential
Tel 021 658 7440
Email [email protected]
http://www.newlandsbrewery.co.za
