OnTap Magazine

N icolas Burger has a certain gravitas, perhaps the slight greying of the hair just humbly hinting at his width of experience. A designer and half owner of the business he runs with his wife Suzanne, an interior decorator specialising in retail outfitting. They designed commercial aquariums while living in New Zealand ten years ago, where a beer bug bit hard. “It was the general availability that got me into beer. You could find so many new beers we had never heard of,” Nicolas recalls fondly. After a few years in New Zealand, Nicolas and Suzanne felt they could apply their skills in South Africa and when they returned to our shores, they moved to Stellenbosch. Nicolas soon noticed the absence of some of the beer styles he had learnt to drink and he started homebrewing with a friend. “I wanted to make beers that couldn’t be bought,” he recalls. Parallel to this resettling, in the Willowbridge ShoppingCentre in Belville, a little beer shop was founded by Niel Harmse around 2016. It was called The Biggest Little Beer Shop, and one of the familiar faces you will see if you walk into the store today, is Sylvia Maart. (She has been there since day one and if you get a chance to chat to her about beer, she is very knowledgeable and makes some pretty good recommendations.) This was a small shop, stocking a selection of South African craft beers that were hard to come by at the time, largely due to the scarcity of a sustainable cold chain in South Africa, the shop was always rotating brands, always fresh and there were even beers on tap for tastings and those individuals who wanted to sit down and have a full beer. Around 2018, the shop was sold to another beer stalwart, Marc Fourie and it was around the same time that Nicolas and Suzanne started buying their craft beer at this fantastic little store. Since their return home, Nicolas and Suzanne had started an interior design business together and he had given up homebrewing and therefore The Biggest Little Beer Shop with its expanded range of beers lured them in fairly regularly. When the shop came up for sale in 2021, Nicolas and Suzanne took the plunge and bought it out with some grand plans and took over ownership in 2022. With their combined talents and passions, the shop was a really good fit, because Suzanne designed new biltong cabinets and made some essential tweaks to the shop design, while Nicolas worked on the branding and relaunched the shop with a slightly more polished The Biggest Little Beer Shop's shop floor is packed with interesting products A huge selection of biltong to add to any beer purchase They offer a fantastic selection of beers fresh from keg ontapmag.co.za | Spring 2023 | 35