OnTap Magazine

12 | Autumn 2019 | ontapmag.co.za OT: This is your second collab with our very own Drifter Brewing Co. How did it all come about? TB: I met Nick and Anna in Portland in 2017 when they were checking out centrifuge equipment and it was then that we got chatting about a possible collab brew. Then when they were back at the end of last year we brewed a Gose IPA. OT: Interesting choice of style – why Gose IPA? TB: For the first time we had access to South African hops, so we decided to use those along with hops from the closest farm to us in Oregon. Drifter had already released their Ocean Aged Tripel so we wanted to kind of reference that and since my brewery is called Migration, we also wanted to reference the South African Sardine Run – the largest biomass migration on the planet – without actually putting sardines in the beer. And so the Gose IPA was born. OT: You didn’t use real sardines, but you did add some oceanic creatures to your collab here in South Africa, right? TB: We did. Nick and I went diving for two days in the Overberg region and caught the sum total of zero oysters and nine mussels... So we ended up buying the oysters to add to our second collab, an oyster Gose. We essentially used them in the way brewers usually use a hopback. So I guess we made an oysterback... OT: An oyster Gose... These unusual beer ideas just keep flowing. TB: We wanted to do something with oysters, but not the usual stout or porter that people have done before. I brought along ocean salt from the Oregon coast to complete the collab nature of the beer. Collab culture is booming in South African beer circles but it’s still fairly rare that an overseas brewer comes down for a brewday. So we were thrilled to sit down with Trever Bass fromMigration Brewing Co. in Portland, Oregon during his trip to Mzansi. OT: So where can people find this beer? TB: It’s actually going to be the first beer canned on the Tiny Keg Productions equipment – a new mobile canning company in South Africa – and will be in the March League of Beers mixed case. OT: We believe it took a while to come up with the name? TB: Ha, yes – the team just had so many ideas. In the end we went with Anything Gose... and the tagline “What the shuck were we thinking?!” OT: Excellent. This was your first trip to South Africa. What did you think of our lovely country? TB: I’ve had an amazing trip. South Africa’s scenery is beautiful and it reminds me a lot of the best parts of the US. I managed to get up to the Kruger, went rock climbing in the Winelands, hiked Table Mountain and of course visited a lot of ingredients. OT: And how does our beer scene measure up? TB: In some ways it’s very advanced in terms of the styles being produced and the execution of them. You could take several of the breweries here and put them down in Portland and they’d fit right in. In a lot of other respects, it’s like stepping back 20 years. A lot of conversations I’ve had here reminded me of conversations we used to have in the States, talking about educating consumers and the challenges in sourcing equipment. OT: Before we let you catch your plane, we’d love to know what happened to those nine mussels you caught... [Trever looks awkwardly at Nick and Anna from Drifter, who head off to find where they left them... ]