EvENTS

EvENT LISTINGS

This year’s Good Food & Wine Show will attract visitors to club bars or laid back jazz lounges to the shebeen or bikini bar at the newly launched scintillating South African Bar.

sA GETs nEW BAR TRADE shoW

The South African Bar Show was launched alongside the wellestablished and popular culinary festival Good Food & Wine Show in Cape Town recently. All alcohol brands and products with the exception of table wine will be eligible to participate in this new consumer lifestyle exhibition that takes place in Cape Town, Durban and Johannesburg later this year.

Event organisers say they have identified a gap in the market for an exclusive, interactive liquor exhibition that focuses on bringing new consumers to market through vibrant experiential and educational interactions with liquor brands.

Sales & Marketing Director of Fiera Milano Exhibitions Africa, Louise Cashmore explains: “Extensive research and meetings with key liquor industry players have made it clear that there is a need for a fresh outlook on how alcohol is exhibited and presented to existing and importantly, new consumers.” There are total of 130 000 discerning visitors annually to the Good Food & Wine Show.

Cashmore says all of the visitors to the Good Food & Wine Show are “lovers of good living” and would potentially be receptive to the ethos of the separate new SA Bar Show. “We subscribe to responsible drinking and enjoyment of alcohol products without the rogue element of excessive drinking. To this end, there will be no free sampling; there will be a couponing system whereby visitors will purchase coupons in order to sample any products in the SA Bar Show.”

The SA Bar Show is seeking exhibitors who will give visitors an educational experience into the world of enjoying the flavours, taste and smells of prestigious alcohol products and with a key message throughout that alcohol should be enjoyed responsibly. introduce our liquor exhibitors to today’s new, younger consumers, most of whom are not given to drinking in excess. And we are also looking for exhibitors who will educate, inform and enchant our more youthful visitors in accordance with our ethos of drinking responsibly,” Cashmore adds.

Dates

• Good Food & Wine Show Durban

August 8 to 11 Durban Exhibition

Centre • Good Food & Wine Show, JHB

September 21 to 24 Coca Cola Dome

Booking and Ticket Prices

Tickets cost R110 for adults and R55 for children - this includes more free theatres than ever before. Visitors will also receive a coupon book that will allow for massive savings and specials.

ToURInG ThE WoRLD oF BREWInG

From the lush hop fields in George to the malting plant in Caledon, to the country’s oldest brewery in Newlands Cape Town, this year’s Heritage Tour provided interesting insight into SAB as a company, how it has grown over the decades and the contributions it has made to sustainable development and responsible business practices. “Not everyone is familiar with the SAB beer-making process, and so the Heritage Tour allowed us to engage with guests on various levels and better acquaint them with our brands,” says World of Beer General Manager, Clive Mooi. “We work with our stakeholders on a daily basis, and this was a wonderful opportunity to showcase SAB as a company – what we do and what we stand for.”

Laurie Conway, General Manager of SAB Hop Farms, took the team through the farming process and explained how hops contribute to the aroma and taste of a particular beer. “At the turn of the 20th century, Ohlsson’s Brewery (which has since become SAB) distributed hops to different locations in South Africa to find the best place to grow them. The climate in George proved ideal,” he says. In fact, George has the only climate in Africa suitable for growing hops. The 450 hectares of hop fields in South Africa account for 70% of the total hops SAB needs for brewing, while 30% is imported. SAB also sells hops to craft beer brewers. After the hop tour and a night at the luxurious Hyatt Regency Oubaai Golf Resort, the team headed off to Caledon for a tour of the SAB Malting plant. SAB Malting Manager, Lauren Steytler, explained how the Caledon malting plant produces 180 000 tonnes of the total 222 000 tonnes annual yield. SAB produces 82% of the total brewing requirement. Dinner that evening at Cape Town’s Kitchen Cowboys was a treat. Celebrity chef Pete Goffe-Wood was joined by SAB trade brewer Denis da Silva, and together they presented a delicious, uniquely South African five-course meal, each dish paired with a SAB brand. Both took the guests through the flavour complexities of each beer, and Pete admitted that food is easier to pair with beer than it is with wine.

“It’s easy to overpower food with wine. Beer is much more robust and has more body, which often makes it a better choice when it comes to food pairing,” he said. The dessert of sticky toffee pudding paired with Castle Milk Stout was a personal highlight, as Pete had also made Castle Milk Stout ice-cream for the very first time and SAB Heritage Tour guests were the first people to sample it! On the last day of the tour the guests went to the Newlands Brewery in Cape Town. This site is a national monument steeped in history, being the first brewery set up in South Africa in 1889. Water used in the brewing at Newlands Brewery comes from two crystalclear natural springs which flow from the base of Table Mountain, ensuring that the beer made there is of the purest quality.

Celebrity chef, Pete Goffe-Wood.

Dish prepared by Pete Goffe-Wood who admitted that food is easier to pair with beer than it is with wine.

EvENT LISTINGS

HaNSa FESTIvaLOF LEGENDS

Zakes Bantwini performs at Hansa Festival of Legends

More than 40 top local music legends from the past 30 years were gathered at Newtown’s Mary Fitzgerald Square for the Hansa Festival of Legends where they gave a stunning ten hour performance. The Hansa Festival of Legends offered music lovers a unique opportunity to hear their favourite hits from yesteryear alongside current chart toppers. The city was pumping to the sounds of hip hop, kwaito, afro pop, soul, jazz, R&B and house beats.

Partygoers got into the groove with their favourite local artists as they were performing on three specially erected stages, participating in a street parade or catching their breath as they chilled at musically themed lounges.

According to Hansa General Manager Khensani Nobanda, this year’s festival was a celebration of favourite artists from years gone by, who have indelibly left their marks on the South African music scene. But it was also a showcase of today’s hottest talent and some of our country’s upcoming stars for which Hansa has previously provided a platform.

Music lovers were happy to see performances by Khuli Chana, Zakes Bantwini, Amu, Spikiri, Sipho Hot stix Mabuse, The Muffinz, Zaki Ibrahim, Lilly Million, TKZee, Spoek Mathambo, Arthur, Mdu and many more. The likes of Lulo Café with his cutting edge house music and the acappella singing group The Soil kept the beats coming as DJ Vigi, Glen Lewis and Oskido spun the decks and hip hop DJ, Dimplez, kept the crowds on their feet. The festival was also to pay tribute to and honour two of South Africa’s most celebrated artists, Lebo Mathosa and Brenda Fassie, who were brought back to life on the day.

Nobanda says just as Hansa Pilsener is a beer with a ‘special ingredient’, so each musician selected for the festival has his or her own ‘special ingredient’ that makes them extraordinary and keeps fans coming back everytime.

shARE YoUR BEER ExPERIEnCE UsInG nEW MYBEER APP

Beer connoisseurs and fundis can now rate, review, discover and share their best beer experiences on the best beers South Africa has to offer using the newly launched MyBeer app. Users can also see the top 10 trending beers, as voted by the beer-loving community, in real time, and view prices.

Festival-goers at this year’s third annual Clarens Craft Beer Festival, sponsored by South African Breweries (SAB), were among the first to become ‘Beer Heroes’ by using the new MyBeer online service, subsequent to its official launch. SAB’s Chief Brewer, Martin Brooks said “MyBeer, the new online beer community, was commissioned by SAB to encourage beer lovers to share their beer drinking experiences with each other. MyBeer is educational, fun and a valuable resource for old and new beer drinkers alike.”

Brooks said MyBeer was spurred by the burgeoning craft beer movement and the growing trend to experience different kinds of beers in South Africa.“SAB hopes that MyBeer will broaden the horizons of beer lovers around the country by encouraging this experimentation and promoting knowledge sharing,” Brooks added. As part of its support of the Festival, SAB sponsored the Best Beer on Show prizes which were selected through a rigorous Beer Judge Certification Programme (BJCP) tasting. The first prize for best beer in show went to the Red Amber Ale by Chameleon Breweries, based in Hartbeespoort. The second prize was the Natal Chilli beer, made by Mtunzini Brewery in Eshowe and the third prize was the Mustang American Pale Ale from Cockpit Breweries, located in Cullinan. The People’s Choice winner, for the second year running, was the Farmer’s Draught from Rustenburg’s Brauhausam Damm Brewery. All the winners received malt and hops from SAB.

For the Clarens Festival, Sandra Innes, one of SAB’s brewers, brewed four exclusive beers, enjoyed by more than 3 000 festival-goers.

The Peary, a crowd pleaser at last year’s Cape Town Festival of Beer, fermented with 100% pear juice, had a medium sweetness and was clear and pale gold in colour. The traditional Weiss beer, Sunset Wheat, had clove-like flavours and moderate fruit esters. A Chocolate Stout, called Willy Wonka, was an indulgent rendition on the popular milk stout, while a lighter version, the Chaleur, had fruity esters with subdued roasted flavours of a classic stout.

Proceeds from the sale of the beers and SAB’s popular ‘love beer’ t-shirts amounted to R27 000, and were donated to the SAB Boucher Conservation Fund, which is raising funds to register South Africa’s threatened rhino population on a DNA database. The database will create a direct link between a horn and a carcass, making it easier to convict poachers. The campaign, driven by retired South African cricketer Mark Boucher, hopes to raise R1-million in its first year and is on target with more than R300 000 been raised thus far.

The MyBeer app can be downloaded for free at www.mybeer.co.za.