BUY THE BOOK
It may have taken us a while, but South Africa has more than caught up to the worldwide revolution known in food and drink circles as “artisanal”. If you haven’t heard of pasture-reared cows, free-range chickens, heirloom vegetables, home-cured meats and handmade cheeses, you need to come out of the fast-food joint.
The latest book to celebrate independent producers of artisanal comestibles is African
Brew , by Lucy Corne and Ryno Reyneke (Struik Lifestyle, R260). UK-born writer Corne, who now lives in Cape Town and is on her way to becoming a certified beer judge, met photographer Reyneke at their home-brewing club, and an idea began to ferment. That has reached glorious maturation in a book that deserves a place on the bar counter of every South African beer lover.
In the beer world, “artisanal” is replaced with “craft”, which refers to any beer not mass produced in a great big factory, but rather carefully nurtured by a human brewer with a face and a name. This book features 40 such breweries, giving the story behind each operation and the people who run it, tasting notes on the beers they produce, and recipes created by some of SA’s finest chefs to match each brew.
“Beer is sweeping the nation,” says the introduction to African Brew. With restaurants and pubs jumping on the bandwagon, offering new labels and interesting beer-and-food combinations, dedicated drinkers of the stuff are becoming more knowledgeable and discerning by the glass. If you want to see where your pint of choice comes from and how it is made, plan a road trip around this book. Make it a long one, and take a designated driver. Random House Struik is giving away three copies of ‘African Brew’. To enter, tell us which Western Cape brewery is named after a ship that sank in 1852. E-mail your answer, name, phone number and delivery address (not PO box) to food@sundaytimes.co.za with AFRICAN BREW as the subject. Entries close at noon on Tuesday, July 16. WINNERS OF ‘CHOCOLAT’ (answer: Cake Boy): Rouxshana Gardee, Lenasia; Unine Dalton, Despatch; Lynne Hazell, Kensington. WINNER OF A SODASTREAM SOURCE HAMPER (answer: Yves Béhar): Nambitha Manzi, Vanderbijlpark.