OnTap Magazine

OT: When and why did you start homebrewing? ER: I went on gap year to the UK in 2009, where I developed a taste for ales. When I got back to South Africa, I just couldn’t find a beer like the ones I had been enjoying. This was back in the early days of craft beer in SA, when you could just about get a Jack Black lager here and there if you were lucky. So I started brewing my own, and was immediately hooked – I dived into the deep end with an all-grain English IPA, and haven’t looked back since. As I’ve progressed, I’ve started experimenting with local ingredients more and more – I love the feeling of creating something new with unique ingredients. My background in molecular biology also helps keep my interest up – I love the science behind the process almost as much as the art. OT: What’s the best beer you’ve ever made? ER: Earlier this year I made a session NEIPA using a Namibian variety of millet called mahangu grown and malted using traditional methods by my fiancée’s parents on their farm in northern Namibia. The grain bill was 50/50 mahangu and SAB pale malt, heavily hopped with African Queen, Southern Passion, and my own freshly harvested homegrown hops - mostly late hop additions, with a hefty dry hop charge. It was brilliant – light and sessionable at around 4.5% ABV, with a slightly tart finish from the mahangu, and a great hop aroma and flavour. Because the ingredients are obviously tricky to get hold of, I can’t brew it too often, but I’m itching to try it again! Honourable mention must go to a very malty Irish red ale I keep coming back to – it’s probably technically more like a dunkel as it’s brewed with lager yeast and lagered for a month, but whatever it is, I love it! OT: What is your biggest brewing disaster? ER: In my early days of brewing, I brewed a fynbos and rooibos ale with a couple of species of fynbos I’d foraged. I was a postgrad student at the time, living in a digs with a few friends, so a batch tended not to last long, and patiently waiting for a beer to mature wasn’t our strong point! We polished off the batch in no time, but agreed that we should save a bottle for a well-known professor of botany we knew, since he is an expert on fynbos. It took ages to get him around, but when we finally did, we excitedly presented him with a bottle that had been sitting for a few months. I popped the cap, and it exploded like bomb – the cap hit the roof, and the kitchen - and everyone in it - was immediately covered in vaguely fynbos flavoured yeasty sludge. Clearly some kind of infection had taken hold. The prof never took me seriously again after that! MEET A HOMEBREWER Edmund Rodseth. Cape Town I love the science behind the process almost as much as the art ontapmag.co.za | Spring 2022 | 47