OnTap Magazine

ontapmag.co.za | Spring 2025 | 17 taprooms and elsewhere. “Initially, I did all of the installations myself, I’m not a trained draft technician, but I kind of learnt as I went along.” An iconic brand was born. THE VOLUMES GROW: “Between 2007, 2008 and 2009, [things were] really difficult. We didn’t have much cash and ploughing everything into putting draft equipment in. Meghan and I were living in a little apartment at the top of Camps Bay and at the end of 2009 we almost packed it up, went back to Canada to work in the wine businesses; that was a lot easier than this.” But with slow and steady growth, it took a few years to take on other employees, starting with a technician and a delivery driver. At this point, they were still selling relatively small volumes. They were still contract brewing, because Ross and Meghan wanted to focus on growing the sales. Ultimately, this decision allowed the brand to grow in those early days, rather than tie up cash in building a brewery. It was hard, but then they had some luck. “We had a slight windfall and got a lot of draft equipment on auction and we expanded our business quite rapidly in 2009 and 2010.” This was key to their growth, because they realised that many of the smaller restaurants were not really on the radar of the large brewing entities. So, their approach was simple; wherever a small restaurant needed a tap, Jack Black would try to fill that gap. This created rapid growth and Jack Black soon outgrew the capacity at Birkenhead Brewery; they needed to brew more beer. Between 2010 and 2015 the whole craft beer category grew, from a couple of handfuls of brands to over a hundred. During this time, Jack Black solidified their position in the market as the demand for craft beer grew. “A lot of the breweries had started putting their own taps in,” Ross says, but Jack Black had built their business around delivering a quality product at a good price with good service to back it up. They managed to push impressive volumes of their Lager through establishments, often their volumes were similar to the larger mainstream beer brands. All of this helped them hold onto their market share and continue to grow. But, as the volumes grew, they had to keep up with demand. “We needed somebody to expand brewing capacity, because Birkenhead couldn’t keep up. We moved over to Boston Breweries in Paarden Eiland and then they couldn’t keep up.” It was a problem that was stopping the brand from growing. “We knew that ultimately we had to expand production and we still didn’t have the finances to put a multi-million-rand brewery together.” It was at this point that they approached the Cape Brewing Company. “We did their distribution and they brewed our beer. Unfortunately, six months to a year into that relationship we were still running out of beer and their beer was growing, so capacity was another constraint. As the partners there, we couldn’t seem to grow quickly enough.” So, innovative as always, they partnered up with an equipment supplier to start the process of building their own brewery. The taproom was born. THE BREWERY AND TAPROOM Late in 2015, Jack Black had acquired a factory in Diep River. Three experienced individuals joined the team, because if Jack Black were to make its own beer for the first time, now at quite impressive volumes, it was going to need a team. The brand had grown significantly and the focus was on future growth. Malcolm Human, awinemaker at Van Loveren joined as operations manager. Jonas Krebs, a newly qualified brewer from Germany, joined as brewmaster and Daniel Behrens, a mechanical engineer, joined as technical manager and brewer. All three of them participated in the commissioning of the state-of-the-art Kaspar Schulz system, still in use today. Malcolm jokes that when they started the building was empty, it had some drainage due to its previous uses, but they had to build the brewery to fit into the space. “Jack Black has a brewhouse built to fit the building.” It is often misunderstood just how big a task it is to move from being a brand to being a brewery. Malcolm explains, “The new brewery was like a new ‘terroir’,” putting it in wine terms. Essentially the new water supply brought with it challenges and adjustments to ensure the beer tasted the same. To compound this issue, they had a very short timeline, after which they had to produce every litre of beer themselves, as their contract with Cape Brewing Company had come to an end. There was pressure to fulfil orders and the small team reverted to brewing during the day and packaging beer at night. He recalls this time nostalgically, recalling an evening of getting an order of Butcher Block ready for a client. The were filling kegs through the night, taking 5-minute sleep breaks on laid out malt bags, while the team alternated between filling kegs and resting. It was an exciting time, because for Malcolm they were constantly problem solving. It was between 2016 and 2017 that they started introducing brands like the Atlantic Wiess, Cape Pale Ale and Keller Pils. (The Keller Pils has been