Kick not so ale and hearty, brew!
Urban myths or not, you may not be smiling from beer to beer with some concoctions
URBAN myths around “secret” ingredients added to traditional beer and home brew to give them maximum kick refuse to die.
However, many home brewers are quick to downplay the whispers of brake fluid and battery acid, or even rats being thrown in as fermentation starters, saying they are often just township “tall” stories or the practice of a small minority of brewers.
Mathabo Moloi, of Freedom Park, cooks up umqombothi from her home, a brew made famous in a Yvonne Chaka Chaka song.
Moloi has been brewing for at least two decades and she says her recipe relies on the addition of iJuba, the commercial pre-packaged sorghum beer. For a 20-litre brew, she adds about five cartons of iJuba, corn, maize malt, yeast and water.
Her beer, which is ready in about a day, has a distinct sour taste and a consistency of a runny lumpy porridge. “It’s a health beer, it even fills the stomach,” Moloi says.
Her customers, especially older people, love it and she can sell 25 litres over two days. “I don’t put these other things in my beer. People enjoy it the way I’ve always made it, the traditional way,” she says.
Another home brewer, Thabo Letsekha, produces and sells imbamba or pineapple beer from his small yard in Freedom Park.
His secret is using brown sugar and slices of brown and white bread for their yeast content. Brown sugar makes the brew stronger in alcohol content. He also carefully wraps each batch in a blanket to help the fermentation process along.
He makes about 10 litres at a time and sells to friends and regulars, which he sells over four days. The beer he produces is a fruity, cloudy beer.
He jokes that he makes it strong because he has to keep his customers drunk so they drink more. “If you drink the one I made three days ago, you would surely taste the difference, and you quickly get drunk.” Letsekha says a pineapple beer that has stood for a few days has the most kick.
While he stays away from the likes of battery acid, he’s aware that there are some brewers who “go the extra mile”.
He adds that the “skop en donner” mix of warm water, pineapple or oranges and battery acid is said to be a “knockout” drink.
Another beer, cautions Le- tsekha, that has a high alcohol content is dihempe (lose your shirt). It’s infused with methylated spirits.
“I once drank that beer. You feel like you’re losing your mind after drinking it.”
But what some see as adding a kick or boosting the alcohol content is exactly what is being targeted under the new draft Liquor Products Amendments Bill, which has its sights on clamping down on dangerous concoctions that can cause serious harm or even kill people.
Professor Charles Parry, director of Alcohol, Tobacco and Other Drug Research Unit of the SA Medical Research Council, says the purpose of the legislation is to align malt and sorghum beer and ales with products in the regulated market.
He concedes that policing the law in the townships will not be a walk in the park. “I don’t anticipate the government going house to house checking who is brewing; they might opt to monitor largescale productions,” he says.
But Parry considers that not regulating such concoctions can be dangerous, saying he has seen people poisoned from drinking beer products with additives, such as battery acid.
He adds that in some instances people add methanol, which can lead to blindness.
The advantage of the bill, he says, is that it provides legal parameters for brewers and makes it easier for police to seize products if they are legis- lated as illegal and prosecute people who are making brews that can truly do harm.
Albertina Kakaza, secretary of the portfolio committee on agriculture, forestry and fisheries, says the bill is before the National Assembly after which it will be tabled before the committee. It will then go for public consultations.
The process is expected to