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The Soul Barrel Brewery in the Cape Winelands, halfway between Paarl and Stellenbosch, has won praise for brewing the best beer in Africa.

The microbrewery took first place in the 2024 African Beer Cup with its barrel-aged beers that only use locally sourced ingredients from the region.

Notably, Soul Barrel Brewery also secured victory in 2022, and this is the second time they have accomplished this amazing achievement.

It was their signature Ale of Origin that impressed judges, with its unique flavour coming from ‘native malt and wheat, hops sourced from the Western Cape, Simonsberg mountain water, and naturally occurring wild yeast carried by the winds’. 

Founder and brewmaster of Soul Barrel, Nick Smith, explains that Ale of Origin was crafted using the time-honoured Belgian Lambic methods, employing raw wheat, aged hops, and spontaneous fermentation – a brewing technique unique to South Africa. 

 

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The beer went up against 270 other beers entered from 16 African countries where a team of experienced judges from around the world evaluated the beers over three days.

 “The African Beer Cup is the most competitive, intense beer competition on the continent with some of the best judges in the world. Winning with a beer that features local yeast and grain is a major achievement for South African beer. We believe in South African agriculture and this is just the start of what we can accomplish with local ingredients.”

Lucy Corne, competition director and co-founder, says the evolving beer landscape across Africa is exciting, noting the introduction of new categories that celebrate traditional African brewing.

“The beer scene across Africa has developed beyond following global beer trends, and we’re now setting some trends of our own”.

This year, to reflect what is happening in craft beer around the continent, the competition introduced a new category to showcase beers that use traditional African brewing grains, including sorghum, millet and fonio.

That settles it, tomorrow we will be dedicated to exercising our democratic right to vote and then celebrating our local brewmasters for a spot of day drinking with Africa’s best.

[source:eatout]