All ale the Jozi Festival of Beer

Last weekend I headed on down to Pirates (Not the Orlando one) Sports Club, in Greenside to experience the first ever Jozi Festival of Beer. The Festival of Beer has been a common feature in the Cape Town diary for the past few years, but the emergence of quality craft breweries around the greater Gauteng area has led to a higher demand for the inclusion of a Johannesburg based festival. And the boys from Festival of Beer delivered, with the kind of style that can simply be described as class.

Visitors to the Festival of Beer were greeted with a glass and your own drinking passport, allowing you to stamp your way through the 150 beers on offer. There was also a variety of options in terms of food, with the Griffen, Foundry and Pete Goffe-Woods Kitchen Cowboys. For me the highlight was obvious, the brilliant “Giant Beer Pong” which took the crowd favourite beer pong and gave us all a taste of life as a midget.

Saturday was a perfect day at the Festival of Beer as the Springboks beat the Aussies, Mike Sharman and his team defied the odds to win the Giant Beer Pong and I defeated my friends by getting 52 stamps in my beer passport. In short, it was a classic.

RESULTS FOR THE BEER JUDGING COMPETITION INCLUDE:

Best Microbrewed Lager – Cape Brewing Co, Pilsner

Best Microbrewed Ale – Dog and Fig Brewery Stewige Stout

Best Macrobrewed Ale – Celis White

Best Overall Beer – Gouden Carolus Classic

The Joburg Festival of Beer will return again next year with even more beers on show and more exciting activities for festival goers to look forward to.

The festival will be making its way to the Mother City for the 4^th edition of Africa’s largest gathering of beer lovers and beer connoisseurs – The Cape Town Festival of Beer! The event is set to take place on the 22-24^th of November at Hamilton’s Rugby Club and will be bringing more beer to the table than ever before!