Craft beer is popular, offering fresh flavours and tastes unavailable in production beers.
Craft beer is a beer made traditionally without machinery by a small brewery. The definition of craft breweries is as follows. Craft breweries have an annual production of six million barrels of beer or less, and no more than twenty-five per cent of the craft brewery is owned or controlled by an alcoholic beverage industry member that is not a craft brewer. Craft beer has become super popular among beer lovers all across the globe.
The German beer industry has a connotation of beer purists. It happened because, five-hundred years ago, the country instituted a German Beer Purity Law called the Deutsches Reinheitsgebot. It is regulations that restrict the ingredients legally allowed in beer to water, hops, and barley. The Reinheitsgebot rules prop up centuries-old large brewers at the expense of the smaller breweries. New German beer brewers use creative ways to sidestep five centuries of tradition, working together with the same experimental energy that led to the start of America’s craft beer revolution in the late 1970s. German craft brewers brew classic and everything from pilsners, wheat beers, pale ales, IPAs and stout beers.
In the United Kingdom, breweries face fierce competition from imported beer. In this competitive environment, the overall market share of craft beer in the UK remains below five per cent of the total beer market. Many people associate craft beer with better quality, care and time poured into making craft beer. Micro craft breweries are questioning the fact that big national and international brewers have begun mass-producing crafty products. The big producers are using the popularity of craft beer by establishing microbreweries, buying existing ones and pouring in big-budget marketing. Another hot topic in the beer world is whether small breweries who became big breweries still qualify as craft breweries.
In South Africa, craft beer is popular among young and older, hipsters and traditional beer lovers. There are an estimated two hundred and fifteen craft beer breweries in South Africa with a share of only one per cent of the beer market. Beer lovers are eager to broaden their taste and try craft beers where available. The South African beer drinker buys lager, lager is the best known and the favoured beer among South Africans. Craft beer offers fruity, sour, spicy, malty, rich and dark flavoured beers to taste and broaden your beer palette. Craft beer is more expensive due to the higher production cost and time it takes to produce the beer. The beer market in South Africa is growing year on year, and so is the exploring consumer, eager to taste new beers.
Globally craft beer brewers are beer enthusiasts who decided to transform their passion into a small business and expand the taste and flavours of available mass-produced beers. A craft brewery uses traditional brewing methods experimenting with different hop varieties, older recipes and exotic ingredients. There is a hemp beer on the South African market brewed with CBD ingredients.
If you are visiting Mr C Harties, you can order a local Fokkof lager or a Devils peak larger, both brewed by local craft breweries.
Harties has many bars to visit. Here are four craft breweries recommended for the obsessed craft beer enthusiast visiting Hartebeespoort Dam.
- Aviators Tavern and Craft brewing company
Aviators Tavern beers consist of an Aviators Wheat, a Red Ale, a Lager and an IPA and we will soon launch a bottling plant to sell Craft Bottled Beer at The Aviators Liquor Store.
- Ale House
The Ale House prolongs old values and principles in the brewing discipline and occasionally produce beer in a farm-style category.
- Iron Throne Brewery
The Iron Brewery offers beer tastings daily.
- Chameleon Brewhouse
Chameleon Brewhouse is a microbrewery based in Hartbeespoort. The brewery offers six different craft beers on tap, including a Blonde Ale, Weiss Beer, American Pale Ale, Irish Red Ale, Oatmeal Stout, Strawberry Cider and a few selected brews like the India Pale Ale, Russian Imperial Stout, Ginger Beer and Robust Porter. Six-packs are for sale in custom gift boxes that you can fill with your six favourite craft beers.