HOPS & DREAMS
The brewery is the new wine farm. Lin Sampson talks to Dan Badenhorst about his venture into craft beer
Ivisit Devil’s Peak Brewing Company in Salt River on a good day for beer. It is in the old clothing district of Salt River where not so long ago famous garmentos plied their trade from the swagger buildings of the industry boom.
We are in the old landmark Pals Clothing building, with its durable, spacy feeling. The decor is nonthreatening, slightly garage-sale; old photographs, cricket bats. Comfy art deco chairs have been ingeniously covered with old army tents.
One of the three owners, Dan Badenhorst, is a doctor in general practice, amiable and easygoing in donkey jacket and veldskoene. “Like most South Africans,” he says, “I grew up thinking all cheese was orange and all beer was lager.”
He began making beer with a friend. “We started out in a warehouse in Somerset West, using milk cans.”
Now he and master brewer JC Steyn produce novel craft beers with local flair. They use only barley, maize and hops, whereas massproduced beer uses many more ingredients. “Industrial beers often add corn syrup whereas we use a rendering method to minimise sugar,” says Badenhorst.
Craft beer has been around a while but lately it has become a whole lot craftier; the yeasty minglings of steaming coppery vats and the dark bubbling witchery of fermentation coil around the Devil’s Peak Brewing Company with its Taproom bar/pub/restaurant.
Making beer is like winemaking with knobs on: more bubbles, raunchier. The science appeals to Badenhorst. “It’s tricky and takes endless experimentation to get right.”
The food at the Taproom is beerfriendly (I have banned the word “pairing” from my vocabulary) fish and chips, curry, and other finessed pub food. But it’s a long way from gastro-pub chichi — not a bunch of rocket in sight.
NO ONE HAS BEEN MORE CORRALLED INTO AN ARCHETYPE THAN THE BEER LOUT
The beer has been carefully branded to appeal to a young, beerdrinking urban population, with playing-card labels that could be straight out of Game of Thrones.
The spectrum available runs through from the easy drinker First Light Pale Ale to the hoppier connoisseur tastes of Rye Saison and Double IPA.
There are also collector beers gathering flavour in wooden chardonnay barrels for a year. “We deliberately infected the beer with brettanomyces [a type of yeast], which is often viewed as a contaminant but in some styles, particularly Belgian beers, can give it a funky, textured taste,” says Badenhorst.
No one has been more corralled into an archetype than the beer lout. The vacant tanker trance that hovers over the potbelly as people, usually men, stand around a bar like elephants in musth. There is always a girl in a sleeveless leather jerkin with tattooed arms.
But at the Taproom, positioned as it is between gastro pub and stylish bar, the customers tend towards the expensively dressed professional, tilting in for an after-work drink. “Great to have a place to get a pint that isn’t too larney,” said a guy at the front door, pulling out the last smoke from a cigarette.
I don’t know about beer: its mystique has always escaped me. I associate it with the dole office in Lyssum Grove where there was always a drunken Scotsman who had just vomited. Going down the pub for a beer never sounded alluring: darts, Tudoresque decor and ancient pies.
Yet you never can tell. This is like finding out that your thuggish neighbour plays first violin in a prestigious orchestra. 95 Durham Ave, Salt River, Cape Town; tel (021) 200 5818; e-mail thetaproom@devilspeakbrewing.co.za; website www.devilspeakbrewing.co.za