OnTap Magazine

I f you live in South Africa, and have even a passing interest in beer, then you’ve undoubtedly heard of umqombothi. is traditional sorghum-based beer has a history that dates back millennia and an almost mythical status, yet many of us don’t really know what it is, how it is made and how it tastes. Having more than just a passing interest in beer, I have de nitely heard about umqombothi. I’ve read multiple accounts of how to make it but until I took this project on, I admit that I had never brewed it or even tasted it before. Being a lover of sour beers, I have always been intrigued by our traditional beer: low-alcohol, quickly fermented, sour and thick, so when the opportunity presented itself to make my own, I took it by the horns and ran. I popped out and bought myself a 10kg bag of the ironically named King Korn, which is actually not corn at all but rather malted sorghum. Only once I started reading the instructions on the pack did it dawn on me that umqombothi is as much a corn beer as it is a sorghum beer. So I also grabbed a pack of No1 Super Maize Meal (it was both No1 and super: how could I go wrong?) and rushed home to plan the brew. Me being me, I couldn’t just do it as per the instructions, so instead of planning one umqombothi, I planned two: one as close to the packet instructions as I could manage and then another with a slightly more modern take on the process. e idea was to still try and come out with a similar looking and tasting product but hopefully with a little more control. Let’s call them umqombothi and Umlunqombothi (umlungu is a Xhosa/Zulu name for a white person). UMQOMBOTHI (INSTRUCTIONS AS PER KING KORN) Add 10 litres of boiling water to 2kg of maize meal and stir well. Add 1kg of King Korn and mix well. Leave overnight to sour. Cook the mixture for approximately 1 hour. Allow to cool and add another 3-4 litres of cold water and 1kg of King Korn and stir well. Leave overnight. Strain the mixture using a kitchen sieve by pressing the liquid out. Leave overnight to ferment. Enjoy! THE BREWDAYS is beer is pretty much as easy as it gets as far as brewing goes. ere was a lot of waiting around in between steps but apart from that, it’s pretty simple. e brew went well, it took a little while to get the maize meal nice and hydrated and break up all of the lumps but eventually it made a great looking and smelling thin porridge into which I added the sorghum. e next morning, it had de nitely done its job. ere was a cap of dry and cracked porridge, which was sitting above an actively fermenting mush with an aroma all of its own. e smell instantly reminded me of a chicken coop: damp and grainy with a touch of sourness and just a little bit faecal. Luckily, with the long boil the vast majority of this aroma was boiled o and in the nal product, it was only a faint hint in the background (more on that later). e rest of the brew day(s) went as planned (remember, it’s a two-day brewing process) with the most di cult part being the straining of the beer from the mash. Sorghum and maize are both super sticky so it took a while to get all of the liquid out and then to get all of the gunk out of the sieve. By the end I had my opaque, viscous and slightly gritty Umqombothi to try. King Korn malted sorghum, Sorghum bicolor No Grainfathers were permanently damaged in the making of this beer e plan was solid but even the best laid plans tend to fall apart horridly. Let’s just say, that the Grainfather wasn’t designed to brew traditional African beers. Within about three seconds, the pump got clogged and no matter what I did, I could at most get a meagre trickle out of the thing. As mentioned previously, sorghum and corn are both extremely sticky so when it was time to strain the liquid o the grain, there was not much straining happening. While stirring the mash to try and coax some of it through the mesh strainer, I managed to dislodge something and the whole mash quickly fell into the Grainfather splashing near boiling, thick, gloopy mash all over the place, including inside and all over the electronic controller. Not only that but my pH meter ran out of batteries and my hydrometer didn’t want anything to do with this gloopy mess, so not only was the brew day a disaster, but I also didn’t take any meaningful readings. In spite of these mishaps, however, I did manage to get through the brew day and get 10 litres of Umlunqombothi wort into my fermenter, where I could add my bacteria and yeast. UMLUNQOMBOTHI Bring 10 litres of water to boil in Grainfather. Add 2kg of maize meal and stir well. Add 1kg of King Korn and stir well. Add 4kg of water and bring the mix to a boil for 10 minutes to sanitise. Cool to 65°C and add 1kg of King Korn and 500g crushed base malt and keep at 65°C for 1 hour. Strain and boil for 15min. Cool and transfer to fermenter. Pitch lactobacillus culture (two LP299v capsules). 12 hours later pitch dry yeast (Mangrove Jack Liberty Bell). THE METHODS ontapmag.co.za | Spring 2019 | 53