OnTap Magazine

OT: Can you give us a bit of background on Castle Double Malt – where did the idea come from? KM: An opportunity was seen in the beer space for a new 100% malt beer celebrating our two growing regions. The original idea was generated from a combination of shared learning from our South American team in conjunction with a multidisciplinary team of brewers, innovation, commercial, finance and marketing teams in South Africa to take the spark of the idea and grow it into something that could be practically investigated. The original ask was for us to come up with a beer with more colour, foam and body than Castle Lager using our local barley growing regions, no further information provided! OT: Launching a new product in such a large company can’t be easy. How long was the product in progress before it was launched and what is involved when developing a new product? KM: We have learnt over recent years that it is crucial to deliver our new innovations as fast as possible from concept to the market. In such a large company we have multiple layers of checks and balances to ensure that what we are producing is the best possible version. Even with the significant challenges of the alcohol bans slowing down certain aspects of the development process, we were able to launch within nine months from concept lock to new recipe and packaging ready for the consumer. OT: What was your involvement in creating Castle Double Malt? KM: All projects start with a charter and concept validation to ensure that the goal is clear, followed by several rounds of recipe development and consumer research. This is where I was spending the majority of the time; including new raw material varieties on various trial batches, adjusting percentages of the raw material inclusions and optimising the brewing process parameters from learnings and analysis based on what the consumer wanted. Once a favourable result is achieved, we run it by the key stakeholders for final approval before we go ahead for scale up and launch. OT: Will it be a permanent addition to the line-up? KM: It really depends on the consumers, if the response continues to grow and the support is there, I look forward to seeing it in the market permanently. OT: There has been a lot of talk about what “double malt” really means. Can you clear that up for us? KM: It does not refer to double the amount of malt, as that would imply Castle Lager is 50% malt and 50% maize, which is not the case. Double malt refers to the two growing regions where our barley is sourced and malted (Alrode and Caledon). Alrode is predominately fed from the irrigated barley growing region in the north, while Caledon is predominately fed from the wetland barley Earlier this year SAB added a new, all-malt lager to their range and we wanted to know more. We chatted to Kyle Moskovitz , part of the team that developed and launched Castle Double Malt. Kyle Moskovitz with Castle Double Malt marketing manager Georgina Willows 14 | Summer 2021 | ontapmag.co.za