OnTap Magazine

60 | Winter 2025 | ontapmag.co.za OT: When and why did you start brewing? NS: I have always preferred craft beer over commercially produced beer. Early last year, a member of the North Yeasters Homebrew Club walked into my shop and ordered some products that they needed for a tasting and we started talking about what they did and I loved the idea. I joined their WhatsApp group and then in May of last year, they had a "broukunde" class (teaching people how easy it is to brew your own beer by brewing four liters of beer in a kitchen at a local school). I looked at the tools required and realized that I have most of them at home already and thought I'd give it a go. OT: What's the best beer you have ever made? NS: My first attempt at a Weiss beer there was a problem with the fermenter and it took three and a half weeks to finish fermenting. I ended up calling it “Unlucky Number 7” as it was my seventh brew and I thought it would be the first failure of my "career." In the end, the banana taste was amazing, however, I have brewed it three times since and have not to date been able to replicate that first attempt. (I suspect it might be the fermentation temperature given that the first try was during winter and the others in summer.) OT: What is your biggest brewing disaster? NS: That would be the first time I did a "party gale.” There are some guys in my brewing club that reuse the grains on a second brew to try funny things with the hops. I did not know at the time that a lot of the taste comes from the hops and did not add any to the second use of my Irish stout grains. I did however throw in a lot of Wilson toffees. Nobody that has tasted that effort has had anything good to say about it. OT: Describe your system in a sentence (or two) NS: I use a second hand Grainfather G30. OT: Do you have any brew day quirks or traditions? NS: I see it as a social event, so I always try and invite someone to visit on the day to come and see how easy it is to brew. OT: What would be your ultimate clone? NS: That Brewing Company based in Durban has a very nice Weiss beer that I would love to try and replicate. My beer that won the Best Rookie was me attempting to brew an Oatmeal Stout that could match the Oatmeal Stout from Whale Coast Brewing, which I believe is the nicest I've had to date. OT: What is your main brewing goal? NS: Short term is to practice and learn the trade. Long term it would be to perhaps open up a small pub that only serves homebrewed beer, brewed by myself and guys from the North Yeasters. OT: You took home the Fools & Fans "Best Rookie" award back in April. Does that kind of recognition impact your hopes and dreams around homebrewing? NS: I only did my first brew in June of last year, so I am still very new and suddenly I get asked for advice and get questions on things that I have not even heard about yet. I do now also get a lot of support from friends and family that want to try my beers and they’ve been providing encouragement to try newer and harder recipes. So we'll see what the future holds... Norman Schultz took home the “Best Rookie” award from the Fools & Fans festival in April of this year. We caught up with Norman, who lives and runs a printing business in Brackenfell, to find out how he got started in homebrewing and what has changed since his ‘big win’! HOMEBREWER