OnTap Magazine

L ooking back, they probably should have called it Brewlands. The Cape Town suburb has been linked with brewing ever since there was a brewing industry in South Africa – in fact, even earlier than that. And as with other brewing hubs around the world, there was a very good reason that Newlands quickly became the heart of beer-making in this country: water. This year marks two centuries since brewing first began on the current Newlands Brewery site, but brewing in this part of the city actually predates that by at least another 126 years. It was 1694 when the Cape’s first trained brewer was dispatched from the Netherlands by the Dutch East India Company - Rutgert Mensing. Whether it was the decision of then governor Simon van der Stel, of Mensing himself, or of some visionary who goes unnamed in history books, it is unclear, but the location chosen for this early brewery was a decision well made. It was in an area known as Nuweland and it was chosen for its proximity to a clean and reliable water source – the springs fed by streams flowing from Table Mountain. It had been almost half a century since the Dutch first set up at the Cape, during which time the Europeans had made numerous attempts at brewing. Historical accounts talk about failed efforts at growing barley, shipments of rotting hops and batches of beer that were probably best used for watering the aforementioned barley plants, so the arrival of a trained brewer must have been very welcome. Mensing was given 30 morgen of land on a farm known as Papenboom, right in the heart of Newlands. Papenboom included the section of Newlands Avenue now home to the Forrester’s Arms, with Mensing’s original brewery located at what is today the Montebello Design Centre. Mensing approved of the site, largely due to the pure, soft water that trickled down from Table Mountain. But despite his knowledge that good beer requires good water, Mensing turned out not to be the star hire the Company had thought, taking several years to get the brewery up and running and then admitting that he “did not know how to stop the beer from going sour”. But while his tenure as official Cape brewer was short-lived, the area in which he started his brewery is still synonymous with brewing to this day. A BREWERY IS BORN Other brewers came and went over the decades, but thenext tobe immortalised in historical accounts was Jacob Letterstedt. Letterstedt arrived from Sweden in 1820 and promptly married Maria Barendina Bekker, a widow and Newlands landowner. That same year, Letterstedt opened a brewery on her land, naming it Mariendahl Brewery in her honour. The name remains to this day on a sign as you enter SAB’s Newlands Brewery to take the 90-minute tour of the historical buildings and to see the modern-day plant in action. Letterstedt, like other Cape brewers of the time, brewed English-style pale ales and a porter, which he advertised in the 1830 South African Directory and Advertiser as “warranted to keep in any climate”. By 1854, brewing was booming in Cape Town, with a census that year counting 13 breweries in the city, a number of which were in Newlands. Some of his contemporaries’ businesses failed, but Letterstedt’s brewery thrived. In 1859, he announced an expansion, with “new utensils, including some from Europe”. The notice also promised a “much improved quality from the 1st April” when “any quantity of Cape Ale, of all the best descriptions, will be Newlands Brewery in the late 1800s - some of the structures can still be seen today Pale ale bottle from a brew at Mariendahl Brewery in 1860 Entrance to the old Mariendahl Brewery, now the reception area and gift shop ontapmag.co.za | Spring 2020 | 17