OnTap Magazine

FEATURE Beer shirts abound at the festival Everyone wanted a pint of Road Trip IPA Clarens veteran Brendam Watcham pours a pint of Copperlake Liquid memories of the fourth fest quite the journey to get to Clarens – it’s pretty much a three-hour drive wherever you’re coming from – and considerably more for those of us travelling from Cape Town. In previous years we’d always flown to Jo’burg and rented a car, but last year we figured if you’re going to trek 1300km to get to a beer festival, you might as well do it in style. And so the Clarens Road Trip was born. A HOP STOP The most direct route would take us there and back along the N1 through the flat and featureless – and largely craft beerless – Karoo. But road trips aren’t necessarily about taking the most direct route, so on the outbound leg we opted for a detour that offered a bit of beery interest along the way. I’m a little embarrassed to say that when planning the trip, it never occurred to me to stop at a hop farm. We were heading along the Garden Route and were pretty much planning to bypass George when a local hop farmer got in touch to point out that we were passing at the best possible time to be in hop country: harvest. And so, on day one, we found ourselves taking a detour to MacDee Hops Farm, where hop farmer Tim McDonald walked us through the fields, talked us through the harvest and invited us to decorate our minibus with fresh hops nipped straight off the bine. That evening we hung out with the Garden Route’s beer nerds, who joined us at the Blind Pig in Wilderness for the unveiling of the road trip beer, a session IPA collab brewed by Afro Caribbean and Parliament Brewery in Cape Town. Say what you will about the term “session IPA”, this was a beer so very unputdownable that we’d virtually run out of cans by the time we actually arrived in Clarens, thanks – in part at least – to the thirsty folk we met along the way. The trip brought so many laughs, so many shared stories and a fair few shared hangovers, but for me the undeniable highlight was the inimitable hospitality of the brewers and beer folk wemet along the way. There was Tim, who invited us onto his farm during one of the busiest weeks of his year. There was Clint Croft, who rallied the locals tomake our first night one that would take some serious beating. There was Derek Saul, whose brewery, Fisanthoek, none of us had visited before. When I told him we would drop by for breakfast, he never mentioned that the brewery didn’t actually have a kitchen and we arrived at his farm outside Knysna to find a feast fit for a hungover king or queen, all cooked on a picnic braai. In Jeffreys Bay we almost ate ourselves senseless as Marius Deetlefs introduced us to every item on Brewhaha’s menu before sending us on our way. An hour down the road, Niall Cook at Richmond Hill had assembled his brewing team for a collab brew and PE’s homebrewing community for another night sipping session IPA. Perhaps my favourite tale of all stars Jonathan Goetsch – a Bloemfontein homebrewer who took a detour on his way home from Clarens to pick up beers from one Bloem brewery and drop them with us at another. I mean – where else would you find a near stranger taking a chunk out of his day to give beer away to a bunch of people he’d never met? Who does that, other than beer folk? The festival itself was everything we’d come to know and love it for: two full days of excellent beer; lots of laughter, love and camaraderie; friends reuniting; a little bit of dancing in the rain and one or two tipsy tales that are best not told in the pages of a magazine. But let’s get together in the Eastern Free State on February 21 & 22 and I’ll tell them to you over a beer or three. If you ever find yourself half way between Cape Town and Johannesburg (or Clarens), looking for somewhere to spend a night, you’d do well to check out Richmond. Just off the N1, it’s not much of a town at first sight – a church, a Caltex and a couple of guesthouses. But Richmond is also home to one of the best bars you’ve never been to. You’ll find no craft beer at Die Krip, but you will find horse saddle bar stools, a giant box of dress-up props, a fine Karoo welcome and a bell on the bar that you do not want to ring… A NIGHT OUT IN RICHMOND 26 | Summer 2019 | ontapmag.co.za