ON THE HOP
Harvest Lager, Cape Brewing Company, 440ml bottle, RRP R25
F or 16 years, Wolfgang Koedel worked as a brewmaster for Paulaner Brauerei, probably the most famous Bavarian brewery. He opened microbreweries around the world — in Shanghai, Singapore and other far-flung cities — before opening a Paulaner Brauhaus at the V&A Waterfront in Cape Town. He liked the city so much that he decided to stay.
A talented and generous brewer, Koedel made an impression. When the V&A Paulaner was forced to close two years ago, he was reluctant to leave. “I could have chosen any place in the world to go with Paulaner,” he says, “but I felt there must be something more for me in South Africa.”
It wasn’t long before he was snapped up by local wine giant Charles Back and Swedish brewery Åbro, the backers of the then-nascent Cape Brewing Company. “They said to me, ‘We don’t need to see a CV, just come work for us.’”
Since December 2012, Koedel and the CBC team have been making some of the best examples of German-style beers in South Africa — from their spicy, lightly sulphuric Pilsner, to their whistle-clean Crystal Weiss — cementing CBC’s place as one of South Africa’s biggest craft breweries, in terms of both volume and reputation.
In essence, Koedel has been given free rein over the brewery, based on Back’s Spice Route farm in Paarl. Given the quality of the CBC Harvest Lager, a traditional marzen released by CBC a few weeks ago in celebration of the wine harvest, it’s a trust that’s well placed.
Good marzenbier — German for “March beer”, although traditionally enjoyed at Oktoberfest — is difficult to find in South Africa. The leading local marzen brand, Hansa Marzen Gold, isn’t easily distinguishable from other macro-brewed pale lagers. Good marzen is usually a deeper amber, with fuller body and with light, but distinguishable noble hop bitterness.
The Harvest Lager is all of that. It’s a celebration of maltiness, exhibiting on nose and palate a wide spectrum of silky and sweet biscuit, caramel and toasty notes, all of which linger long after each sip. Above all, it’s seriously smooth — a result, perhaps, of a complex grain bill, consisting purely of imported malts. Although the beer was planned to be a one-off, the quick selling out of their first 3 000-litre batch means a change of plans. “We’ve reached a point where we have to put it into our portfolio,” Koedel says. “It goes too well.” Good news for lovers of German| lagers. And for me — the case in my fridge is almost done.