Beer Beneath the Acacias – An Open-Air Fest in South Africa’s Capital

Groups of beer enthusiasts in matching t-shirts bearing terrible beer puns walk the dusty festival grounds in search of the weirdest small-batch brews on offer. Some stop to play blind tasting games in a clearing among the trees, where homebrew stores and clubs have set up stands to offer a little edutainment amidst all the drinking. Elsewhere there are people who won’t stray even as far as a pale ale, going through pint after familiar pint of lager as they scan the band lineup, hopping from stage to stage throughout the day.

The diehard beer lovers never seem to sit down, roaming between the gazebo-covered stands always on the hunt for a beer they’ve never tried, a style they’ve only read about on blogs or in BJCP guidelines. But there are also plenty of people who arrive with foldable picnic chairs, setting up camp in one spot and wandering only as far as the nearest brewery stand or later, inevitably, the portable toilets.

This is Capital Craft Beer Festival, South Africa’s biggest. This June – in the middle of the southern hemisphere winter, 12,000 people arrived to drink, to dance, and to spend a day soaking up occasional patches of winter sun.

Al fresco sipping

South African beer festivals have a distinct stamp. Beer is the anchor that draws people in, but it’s really only one aspect of the event. Our beer fests almost always have live bands. There are food trucks and non-beery beverages, kids’ entertainment areas and games for adults – but above all else they are, almost without exception, staged outdoors.

Festivals in South Africa take place in town squares and on private pieces of land. They’ve happened in the grounds of Cape Town’s Castle of Good Hope – the country’s oldest building – and in the grounds of various rugby or cricket stadiums. And Capital Craft is held at one of the most majestic venues of all: the National Botanical Garden in the South African capital of Pretoria.

Capital Craft Beer Festival premiered in 2013, then at another of Pretoria’s major landmarks, the Voortrekker Monument, a granite memorial to the early Afrikaner explorers that left the Cape to venture into South Africa’s hinterland in the 1800s. In its first edition, just short of 2000 curious beer lovers arrived to see what the city’s first major beer festival had to offer. It was a huge coup for organisers, in a city with largely conservative drinkers and only a couple of craft breweries.

Three years later the event had more than doubled in size and a new venue was needed. Since 2016, Capital Craft Beer Festival has taken place at Pretoria’s National Botanical Garden, a 76-hectare (188-acre) space filled with indigenous plants, a couple of cafes, myriad walking paths and once a year, a colossal beer and music festival.

Bolstering the beer scene

I sometimes wonder how the organisers managed to convince the National Biodiversity Institute – the organisation that runs the country’s nine botanical gardens – to allow them to take over for a weekend. You can just imagine the conversation: “You want to bring in 40 brewers, more than a dozen bands, and a sound system that would give Glastonbury a run for its money? And there will be more than 10,000 tipsy revellers in the grounds? Sure – why not.”

Of course, when you know Johan Auriacombe, the driving force behind Capital Craft, it becomes a little less mysterious. A giant grinning ball of energy, Auriacombe always makes me think of a St Bernard Puppy: always enthusiastic, instantly likable and very difficult to say no to.

He also managed to convince the region’s commuter train operator to give festival-goers free rides to and from the event. And partnered with local airline Lift, who offer discounted tickets for brewers and attendees from elsewhere in the country. This year they even added a special edition festival beer to their on-board menu – a hazy pale ale called Cloud Control, brewed by Aegir Project Independent Brewery in Cape Town. The excited buzz around finding a limited-edition craft beer on board a major airline was felt throughout the country’s beer industry in the runup to the festival. Another coup for craft.

Beer and music

For every person that attends the festival to taste what is new and unique though, there is another who attends more for the music, with the beer stands being a great perk between bands. The festival organisers excel at attracting musicians the way they excel at convincing brewers who normally don’t attend festivals to travel across the country with their entire tap room team.

This year’s headliner was Fokofpolisiekar, an Afrikaans punk band who recently supported Offspring and Green Day on the South African leg of their tour. In the past the festival has played host to iconic 1980s Afropop legends Mango Groove and blues guitarist Dan Patlansky, a local talent who has opened for Bruce Springsteen and toured with Joe Satriani. The festival debuted with one stage and 12 brewers. Today there are four music stages tucked away between the acacia trees, and 45 breweries from up and down the country to choose from.

It’s actually a little overwhelming for a one-day event. The beer list is published days in advance so that beer nerds can crack open their highlighter pens and make a festival wish list. But I at least have never managed to make a dent in my “to taste” list. There are too many people to chat to, too many games to play, too many bands to dance to. I’m never without a pint in hand, yet somehow I only ever manage to cross off a fraction of the beers I wanted to try.

Pick your pint

This is perhaps how South African festivals differ most to their counterparts in the US or Europe. On arriving at Capital Craft, you’re presented not with a tasting glass but a pint mug. Some stands offer half pints, others insist on a full pour, and while most will allow you to try before you buy, it’s more of a drinking festival than a tasting event.

That’s not to say there isn’t an array of innovative beers though. This year’s beer menu included a peanut butter porter and a piña colada NEIPA; a beetroot pale ale called “Bloodweiser”, a mango sorghum sour and a 2.5% ABV milk stout with fig leaves; a chicha-inspired maize lager and cherry sour with added electrolytes (great for those that indulged in pre-festival beers the night before). The biggest sellers are always pale lagers of course, and even the smallest, wackiest breweries dabble in something that might appeal to the more mainstream drinker. This year two breweries added a beer called “Lager Thing” to their chalkboards

Our craft beer scene isn’t yet widespread enough to sustain a festival of this size on weird beers alone, but what Auriacombe and team have accomplished is astonishing. This is a country with fewer than 120 microbreweries, where craft beer has never managed to bag more than one per cent of the country’s total beer market. But for one day only, in the middle of winter, 12,000 people travel to Pretoria’s Botanical Gardens in the name of beer. And I think that’s worth raising a glass to.