Cape Town Festival of Beer: Blogger challenge

On the 20 November the brewers gathered at SAB's Newlands brewery to have their creations judged and to decide who would be the ultimate blogger brew challenge master! Before the judging began the brewers were treated to a tour by brew master Reto Jaeger to get them in the spirit of things. The judging panel consisted of Kyle who is the captain of the UCT brewing team, which won the intervarsity brewing championship (for such a championship exists), Ryno Reyneke, who is a home brewer and is from BruHouse, Martin Tucker who is a beer merchant with Keg King and a partner in the Cape Town Festival of Beer and, finally, Denis da Silva who is the trade brewer of SAB. Thankfully, the gentlemen weren't too harsh on the bloggers and as Martin said: "The bloggers weren't judged on what they were supposed to do, but on what they did."

How do you get one of those jobs?

The judging was based on the flavour, aroma, appearance, mouth feel and overall impression of the beers. Seeing these men at work was something to behold and although I didn't understand the terminology I definitely know more about beer than any lady ought to. I thought a beer was a beer was a beer, but, apparently, is can smell like vanilla, bananas or even biltong spice; it can be sweet or sour or both and can even be too carbonated. The question I want to know, and I am pretty sure most men would like to know, is how do you get one of those jobs?

The bloggers also had to have their readers design names and labels for their beers and I think that is where they had the most fun. So, the winner of the actual brewing competition was Tank Lanning with his beer "Front Row Grunt Lager", which the judges deemed the best of the worst and the winner of the design competition was Moustache Mermaid created by Dan Nash and Natalie Roos.

It was an awesome evening and a big thank you to Newlands brewery for the venue (and the beer), to the judges and to Dan Nash for wrangling up the 10 bloggers. Not only was it an awesome evening, but an awesome few weeks for all.

The next time you open up a cold one, just remember what it went through to get into that bottle to reach your lips. It gives a whole new appreciation to drinking beer. Cheers!