OnTap Magazine

68 | Summer 2020 | ontapmag.co.za NICK GRENFELL EVENT RECAP Now in its second year, Novemberfest is the Wort Hogs’ spring festival, which this year was hastily arranged after the move to Covid level one. Holding the festival outdoors, measuring guests’ temperatures and recording all their contact details meant we would minimise risks as far as practically possible. And we stuck to 2020’s “new normal”: wherever you are in Jo’burg, you’re never more than three metres away from a bottle of hand sanitiser. Unsure how many brewers we would get to join us, the committee brewed a 100L batch of Damm Kveik, (the farmhouse ale originally brewed, fermented, and served at Africa Brew 2019 in 36 hours), to make sure we would have enough beer. We need not have worried. A ne mix of familiar faces and new club members stepped up. In the end 24 brewers turned up with 31 di erent beers – around 700L of beer in total. Some people took life easy during lockdown. Not Brendan Watcham, owner of Copperlake Brewery, who has constructed a huge new veranda, a stage for his ever-increasing line-up of musicians and a 1000L re ux still. I arrived on Friday afternoon to go over nal details only to nd him welding together a spit braai for the festival, a project he had started that morning. What an awesome host. After such a quiet year with all club activities suspended since March, there was an extra degree of excitement setting up. Fire extinguishers and corny kegs connected, jockey boxes lled with ice and taps owing. My Belgian dark strong was christened Bano ee Pie. e explosive nature of initial fermentation and the higher-than-expected final gravity had lent the 10% beer an unmistakable character of ripe bananas and sweet caramel. A half-decent Munich Helles completed my line up. Grant Williamson’s near-heroic feat of tasting all 31 beers in the rst hour remained unmatched though I did see him reclining on a Copperlake sofa later in the day. Sofas at a beer festival – why has no one else thought of that? Now on to the beers. Chopper One Brewing’s Tequila LimeGose and 1048Brewery’s Catharina Sour with guava stood out in the sour category. Paleales,blondesandafarmhousealewithrooibos helped keep hydration levels high with some malt balance provided by best bitter, Irish red ale and an excellent British brown ale from Robin Marsden. Ngula Kalili was not going to let the lockdown inconvenience of a burnt-out element on his brew kettle stop him. His dedication in pushing 48kg of apples through a budget Mellerware juicer paid o handsomely, resulting in a truly delicious sweet cider and a well-deserved third place in the People’s Choice contest. European beer styles were well represented with Munich dunkel, helles, Vienna lager, Kölsch, and a beautifully crafted light weiss beer which won Lee Carpenter of Hammertime Brewery the Brewers’ Choice and second place in the People’s Choice. ere was a welcome return of some old school American IPAs (including rye, black and naartjie versions) with proper bitterness, no yeast in suspension and nary a hint of lactose, as well as some fine examples of NEIPAs. Paulo Govetto, one of the Wort Hogs' newer members, brewed an outstanding Session IPA which won him rst place in the People’s Choice. A beer festival planned tentatively six weeks in advance, with many people still trying to understand how to interpret lockdown rules and relate them to their lives, was expected to be a quiet affair. An opportunity for a few homebrewers to get together, share their passion for beer and rediscover the camaraderie which we have so keenly missed this year. Over 300 people rocked up, proving that if there’s one thing people have really longed for this year, it’s a bloody good beer festival. Proper bitterness, no yeast in suspension and nary a hint of lactose