Craft Brewers’ Powwow in Cape Town

Is it plain northern hemisphere ignorance or something altogether more sinister why news coming out of Africa gets ignored unless it fits the cliché of Africa as a place of misery and warfare? Or how could it be that the business magazine Forbes in November 2015 published an infographic on the global craft beer boom which left South Africa a white spot – as if no craft breweries could be found there?

See for yourself at http://blogs-images.forbes.com/niallmccarthy/files/2015/11/20151111_Craft_Brewers_Fo.jpg.

Incidentally, Australia according to Forbes, also drew a blank, despite its craft brewers’ tally having risen to 375 by March 2016.

In South Africa, to get back to my story, craft brewers currently number around 180, which is a lot considering that in the rest of sub-Saharan Africa (Uganda, Kenya, Ethiopia) there are only about eight craft breweries operating.

The boom in craft beer is a fairly recent phenomenon but has taken the Cape Town beer market by storm. Considered a bit of hip place and an incubator for all kinds of fancy food trends, it’s no wonder that today the Cape area (Western Cape, to be precise) has the most craft breweries (80), according to industry personality Lucy Corne and was chosen as the location of the first industry get-together, the Craft Brewers’ Powwow, a beer expo and conference.

The man behind the Powwow is Mario Delicio, who has to be credited for setting up Africa’s first craft brewery in Ethiopia’s capital Addis Ababa in 2006, the Beer Garden Inn, together with his partner Banshebi Tejiwe. Today his company Dematech serves as a supplier of equipment and raw materials to the South African craft beer industry.

As South Africa does not have a craft beer industry association yet, Mr Delicio decided to bring craft brewers together not only to create a sense of unity and forge cooperation, but to put them into the know as to what happens in the rest of the world.

Moreover, he wanted to inform budding commercial craft brewers about what to bear in mind when setting up a craft brewery. Mr Delicio sought to drive home the message that environmental concerns should be foremost on their minds when planning a brewery, having set a good example himself when he built his own hotel, the Hotel Verdi near Cape Town’s airport, which won accolades as Africa’s greenest hotel ( www.youtube.com/watch?v=AoDzBZcqsh8).

The Powwow ran for three days (20 to 22 May 2016) and was attended by nearly 100 delegates. BRAUWELT International’s “Yours truly” (myself) and Horst Dornbusch from the U.S. were among the foreign presenters. The conference concluded with a visit to the new Darling brewery north of Cape Town, whose 30 hl brewhouse was supplied by Kaspar Schulz from Bamberg.

Mr Delicio has already announced the dates for next year’s Powwow. It will be held in Cape Town from 5 to 7 May 2017.

My report on South Africa’s craft brewing industry will be published in BRAUWELT International 4/2016.