Good Food and Wine Show

We’re going to be at the Good Food & Wine Show from 23 – 26 May 2013 and would love for you to join us.

We will be stocking the following products at our stand:

Stellenbrau – Craven Craft Lager & Alumni Ale (draught)
Mitchell’s Brewery – Forester’s and Milk & Honey (draught) with selected bottles in 660ml & 330ml
Singha
Corona
Paulaner
Erdinger
Maesels
Wharsteiners

Belgian Beer tasting delight

Belgian beauties

Yesterday we were delighted to be introduced to a new range of Belgian beers at a small tasting arranged by Martin Tucker from Keg King SA at the V&A Waterfront’s Market on the Wharf.

Lindemans Kriek

The Belgian Trading Company (BTC) has imported a range of beers and will be distributing these into the South African market and I think many people will be delighted! To date we have had pretty much the same range of beers from Belgium, except of course if you are a regular to Den Anker, who have always had a wonderful range of their own imports.

Cape Town is the beer capital of Africa!

Good reason to cheers!

It’s been a long time since we’ve written, but that is just because it’s been booming beer and all three of us have been getting on with it in various parts of the industry, and then coming together for an event like the Cape Town Festival of Beer. What a cool event. What a big event for Cape Town!

Taster or full pint?

We were on both sides of the bar this year; getting the word out there for a couple of brands; discovering new beer; making new friends; selling beer and it was good. It’s a festival that is going to grow every year and become a real landmark event for the city and the country.

The newest Beerbabe in town

My but morphine is fine

Den Anker Kwak Spring Special

Celebrate Spring Belgian style

Yesterday, The Beer Garden SA was invited to celebrate Spring at Den Anker in the sunshine at the V&A Waterfront. There are a whole number of Spring specials on the go at the Waterfront over the coming weeks, but a beer taster is right up our alley and we couldn’t have picked a better day for it.

Tipsy trio

Den Anker is well-known for its wide range of Belgian Ales & Lagers and their beer menu boasts some amazing brews. We were there to enjoy the Pauwel Kwak, an 8.4% amber ale from the Bosteels Brewery in Buggenhout, Belgium.

Save the planet! It’s the only one with beer!

Beer makes the world go ’round!

At The Beer Garden, we write a lot about the little guys and what they are doing right in the world of beer. The question though, apart from the obvious glory and euphoria of this hoppy beverage is, “What is beer doing for the world?”.

We were invited this week to join Newlands Brewery’s General Manager, Diarmaid, their head of environmental sustainability, Andre and brewer, Peter to learn a bit more about what SAB Miller  are doing for our planet and specifically how they manage their water.

Hop ‘n Vine hopped devine!

Proudly craft!

This past weekend saw about 1400 Cape Tonians (and some imports) brave the torrential downpour to join over 15 brewers, 5 garagiste wine makers, live bands and skilled food vendors under the sheltered roof of Simon’s Restaurant at Groot Constantia for The Craft Beer Project’s first Hop ‘n Vine festival.

Lenny making sure all was spick and span!

The last three weeks have been chaos in a mash tun for a lot of our brewing buddies as everyone started getting their brews ready for Hop n Vine, there was a lot of kegging, tasting, brewing, tasting, travelling, tasting and prepping happening to make sure that each brewery brought their finest offerings to the table for this highly anticipated event. If the media launch was anything to go by, not an empty belly or glass would be present on the day and The Craft Beer Project did not disappoint.

Hop ‘n Vine – if media launch was this good, don’t miss the festival!

Savour hand crafted beer and garagiste wines

We always get excited when we hear about food and beer pairings, so when Banana Jam’s Greg Casey sent us an invite to attend the media launch for the up-coming Hop ‘n Vine Festival we jumped and made sure we were at Simon’s @ Groot Constantia nice ‘n early so as to not miss anything!

A hoppy start to the evening!

The evening started with open taps featuring eight of the craft beers that will be available at the Hop ‘n Vine fest as well as some fantastic, locally sourced wines and cheeses. We were then welcomed by Greg Casey and Russ Meyer from Jolie 360. They explained that food and beer pairing is as easy as trying out different flavours in your own home and letting your palate explore instead of just sticking to the same old beer day in and day out.

Defending Camelthorn Brewing Company

One of the best quality beers and the only microbrewery in Namibia, Camelthorn delighted us with every glass!

Sometimes one finds an article in the press that just makes you want to go out and throttle the author, not only because of its really crap level of journalism, but also because of the many blatant untruths that it records. But in this day and age we can’t do that as it is frowned upon, but we can certainly set the record straight.

Camelthorn Brewing Company from Namibia has been going through a tough time and there have been a number of reports floating around touching the subject, but a recent article by Edson Haufiku from the online publication Informanté is just the cherry on the crap-pile.

How beer saved the world

As if we ever doubted it

I got an email from Peter from asking if we could help him out. He and a few friends have created a “data visualisation” on the topic of beer and wanted us to please send feed back from ourselves and our audience. So we clicked through to the infographic and found it extremely interesting and beautifully designed. Please let us know what you think.