OnTap Magazine

18 | Spring 2020 | ontapmag.co.za FEATURE obtainable”. Some of the buildings from the 1859 expansion are still standing today and form an important part of Newlands Brewery’s landscape. Sadly, Jacob Letterstedt passed away just three years later, leaving the brewery in the hands of his daughter, Lydia. Shemade extensive upgrades in 1881, including a move to gravity-fed brewing and the construction of the tower brewery that still stands today. But despite some successes, she ended up leasing and later selling the brewery to another Scandinavian immigrant, one Anders Ohlsson. OHLSSON’S EMPIRE Norwegian-born Ohlsson was a shrewd businessman and politician. He first ventured into the brewing industry in 1881, founding the Anneberg Brewery in Newlands. Today, Anneberg Road falls within the grounds of South African College High School and sadly nothing remains of the original brewery. Ohlsson went on to buy out the Cannon Brewery – whose building still stands on Cannon Street in Newlands – and the Cloete Brewery (also known at the time as the Newlands Brewery), which was situated on Newlands Avenue, across the road from the Forrester’s Arms. In 1889 he also acquired Letterstedt’s Mariendahl Brewery, merging the four to become Ohlsson’s Cape Breweries Ltd. At the time it was the largest industrial enterprise in the country outside of the mining industry. Perhaps the most important legacy of Ohlsson’s foray into the brewing world was securing the rights to the Albion Spring in 1898. He had already secured water rights for his Anneberg Brewery in 1883, then when he purchased the Cloete and Mariendahl breweries he got additional water rights to the Newlands Spring. Ohlsson was a founder and major shareholder of the Cape Town District Waterworks Company and when it was sold to the Suburban Municipal Waterworks, Ohlsson is said to have secured a guarantee that his brewery would receive 175 000 gallons of water free of charge each day from the Albion Spring, and that no other brewery would be supplied from it. Not that there were any other breweries left in the area at this point, since he’d bought them all out and incorporated them into his own mini brewing empire. SAB TAKES OVER Ohlsson ran his brewing company with great success, adding a lager brewery in 1900, just a couple of years after the first lager had been produced in South Africa. He retired in 1906, passing control of the brewery to his son Axel. Ohlsson senior lived out his remaining years at the Montebello residence he had acquired years before along with the Cloete Brewery. Shortly after his death, a new lager was released in his honour, one that bore his nickname, The Lion. Ohlsson’s Cape Brewing and Union, as the company was then known, continued until 1956, when it was taken over by South African Breweries. The old brewhouse has of course been replaced and upgraded many times since then, The old and the new working seamlessly together Early packing line circa 1900s This 1940s delivery van is on display outside the old malthouse Newlands Distillery and Brewery in the 1830s