OnTap Magazine

E lgin is best known for its apples. e area is home to farmstalls pouring freshly squeezed apple juice; it’s home to the Appletiser plant and it’s also the centre of the country’s – admittedly small – cider industry. Apple orchards are a key part of the area’s landscape, as are the large packing sheds that cling to the N2 waiting to process the apples and send them to their destiny as pies, crumbles and lunchbox snacks. People tend to just pass through, but a new addition to the area is turning Elgin into a destination in its own right, rather than just a place to grab a pie on your way to Knysna – and it’s all happening in an old apple shed. e Elgin Railway Market opened this winter to instant acclaim. e vast warehouse has been given a steampunk facelift and tted out with a selection of local vendors selling meaty lunches, handcrafted furniture, Elgin Valley wines and some seriously decadent fudge. And of course, there is a bar. I’ve noticed a tendency, among those who run local food markets, to try and cram as many craft beers as possible onto the taps, but the Elgin market has resisted the urge, instead opting to stock the wares of just one local brewery, Old Potter's Inn – alongside some macro bottles that is. SUPPORT LOCAL Other than those green bottles, the market places heavy emphasis on local producers, something that is echoed around the Overberg region. I’ve often remarked, if only to myself, how lovely it is to see local restaurants supporting their local breweries. Here you’ll often nd that the only beer on tap comes from Old Potter or Honingklip or Hermanus Brewing Company rather than one of the larger brands ubiquitous in Cape Town. Of course for the real local experience, you’ll have to go to the source itself and luckily one thing the Overberg does well is destination breweries. Our route begins in Greyton, home to galleries, horse drawn carts and a particularly friendly brewery. It must be a rare person that meets Trevor Gerntholtz and doesn’t comment on what a cheery bloke he is. Owner of e Old Potter’s Inn & Brewhouse, Trevor also runs the annual Fools & Fans festival, held in the village each April. His cosy taproom o ers tasters and pints of the ve core beers – saison, pale ale, amber ale, IPA and the generously hopped rice lager. Greyton is not a large place and you could pretty much walk to any guest house in town after a few City Slicker pale ales, but the cherry on the cake is that Old Potter doubles as a guesthouse, o ering en suite rooms and delightful two-storey cottages. BARLEY COUNTRY After a country breakfast at one of Greyton’s cafes, backtrack to the N2 and pass through Caledon, where SAB’s grain silos dominate the skyline of the farming town. An undulating, hour-long drive takes you past barley elds, through Napier (once home to a brewery) and Bredasdorp (home to a fairly interesting Shipwreck Museum) and on to Black Oystercatcher Wines with its latest addition, Fraser’s Folly brewery. e brewery moved from premises in a small Struisbaai industrial estate in 2017 and a brewhouse upgrade soon followed. In August of this year, British brewer Fraser Crighton unveiled his Brewmaster’s Reserve range, launching a raspberry sour and a barley wine aged in brandy barrels. e brewery is best visited in school holidays, when you can take a peek into the brewhouse and barrel room and join Fraser for a casual pairing, matching simple snacks with the ve core beers. e focus here is on English style ales, with the IPA showcasing earthy UK hops instead of the more pungent American versions. Alongside the IPA and highly qua able pale ale, there’s a pilsner, weiss and the most lauded of Fraser’s Beers, the Moer Ko e stout. If you’re visiting outside peak season, grab a sampler at the wine tasting room and assuming you’re staying the night in one of the on-site cottages, you might as well stick around for a wine tasting as well. is is a remote corner of the Overberg and save for sightings of blue cranes hanging out in canola elds, there isn’t much to stop for. But it is worth paying a quick visit to Elim, a Moravian mission station with one of the prettiest main streets in South Africa. Home to 1400 people, a historic water mill and a 19th-century church, the main road is lined with quaint cottages thatched by local artisans. It’s a charming place to stretch your legs, just as long as you’re not looking for a pint: despite the surrounding wineries, Elim has always been a dry town. BREW WITH A VIEW e landscape changes as you head west along a network of dirt roads, with canola elds replaced by evergreen trees. You emerge onto the R326 and in a few short minutes you arrive at the gates of one of South Africa’s oldest microbreweries. Birkenhead Brewery celebrates its 20th anniversary in 2018 and while the old stalwart has sometimes struggled to remain ELGIN STEAM TRAIN Every other Saturday, you can take an old steam train from Cape Town to the station at Elgin. The three- hour journey costs R750 (R500 for kids) and drops you at the market for a lazy afternoon of grazing and browsing before heading back home. www.ceresrail.co.za ontapmag.co.za | Spring 2018 | 39