The Mad Zymurgist: Experimentations in Beer

In November I had the opportunity to travel to South Africa to start working on a project with an incredible group of people.  The organization I work with is called the Zulu Orphan Alliance and they raise money to feed orphans and vulnerable children living in the townships outside Durban.  One of the reasons that Matt and I went over was to start the process of building a shelter for the kids.  The trip in November was more informational - we met the people we would be working with, saw the land where we will be building and got permission from the Zulu Councillor to build.  We can't wait to go back, but the number one most important thing we need to do now is raise the money.

Zulu Beer in the making for a wedding celebration.

While we were there, I learned about Zulu beer.  There is no one recipe for Zulu Beer, but it is often brewed with pineapple, oats, and bread and other versions are made with sorghum. I wasn't able to try any for myself while I was there, but my friend who lives in South Africa tried some traditional beer and got some photos for me. 

I was inspired by this beer and wanted to try to make something similar back in the states.  But what I really wanted to do was take the concept and integrate it into a more traditional American style beer.

I bought the ingredients.  To replace the bread, I chose a honey wheat extract.  Also, I used a mini-mash of  Belgian Pils Malt, white wheat and flaked oats.  A mini-mash, if you've never brewed beer, is where you put all the grains in a cheesecloth bag and soak it in hot water to make a beer tea before adding the liquid malt extract and boiling the whole thing. When I added my honey wheat malt, I also added 3 quarts of sorghum syrup.  I also added Hallertau Hops, a mild German hops that will add just a tiny bit of earthiness to what was going to be a very sweet beer.

Now, here is where things got a little crazy. When the wort was done boiling, I cooled it and put it in the carboy. Then, instead of adding water I added Pineapple Juice.  This is incredibly insane.  This made my original gravity very high, which is one of the measurements that help determine what your alcohol content will be in the finished product. I tasted the wort, which is tradition for home brewers and it was super sweet but potentially very good. It tasted like bread and pineapple. Then I added the yeast to the beer and the real magic will happen over the next few days.  After a couple of weeks it will be ready to bottle and a few weeks after that it should be drinkable.

I have some plans for this beer. I am hoping that eventually I can use it to raise money for the Zulu Orphan Alliance.  Since I am a home brewer, I can't sell my beer but what I can do is continue to perfect this recipe and then potentially contract brew to get it on the shelves and at the bars. The intention along the way would be for all the proceeds to go back to the ZOA to help feed the kids and build the shelter.  Wish me luck.

Southern HemisBeer

I just got back from a tip to South Africa. If you want to read the general recap, you can check it out at our Tiny House Blog.

One of the things I wanted to experience while we were there was the local beer culture. I quickly learned that there really wasn't much of one. There is a single macrobrew company, South African Breweries, which is a subsidiary of SABMiller. It turns out that all the the available beers are owned by this same company. Coming from the rich and diverse American Craft Brew movement, this was a bit of a shock but we did find that several of the beers were quite tasty.

Lagers appear to be the most popular style. Only one of the available beers was an ale, and that was a stout. Here are the beers we experienced in South Africa, ranked from least favorite to favorite. 

Hansa Pilsner
This was a not-bad-at-all drinking beer, but it lacked a bit of personality. It was a little better than the typical American Pilsners - like Budweiser and Miller.

Castle Lager
Similar to the Hansa, regular Castle Lager isn't much to write home about but it is still better in general than most mass produced American Beers. 

Castle Draught
However, Castle Draught is essentially the same thing as Castle Lager but a little better. It has more of an Octoberfest taste, still a Lager but richer than their regular offering.  I found this one a reasonable beer experience.

Hansa Marzen Gold
But speaking of Octoberfest, Hansa had a Marzen available that was better than the Castle Draught.  Marzen is the actually style of the traditional German Octoberfest beers.  It is typically brewed in March, which is what Marzen means, and stored cold underground until the September festivals in Munich.  I'm not entirely sure that the Hansa beer is a true Marzen but it was drinkable.

Castle Milk Stout
My favorite beer in South Africa, however, was the Castle Milk Stout. Milk Stout is one of my favorite styles of beer in general so I was excited to give this a try.  It doesn't match my favorite microbrew milk stout, but I found int on par with some other American versions of the style. 

It is interesting to note that I don't know that I would have liked any of these beers if it hadn't been for the American Craft Brew Industry. I knew off the bat that most of these beers weren't brewed with the style and quality of a good craft beer.  That was made clear when I read the ingredients and Corn was on all of the lists. In the US, corn and rice are used as fillers by the corporate beer industry.  This was very apparent in the Castle Draught and the Hansa Pilsner but it was less obvious in the Milk Stout that had enough other things going on to mask it.

South Africa is certainly not going to be known for it's beer culture, but what they had available were passable and, in the instance of the Milk Stout, not bad at all.