Most of the stuff is all marketing, right? These are questions I am struggling with as well. We have a couple of people trying to brew South African Pale Ales (SAPAs) or Cape (the region) Pale Ales (CPAs) and stuff like that, but most of it is marketing as the ingredients, as you said in your post, comes from various regions across the world, so why call it South African or Cape? Other smaller breweries have been putting local ingredients into their beers (I just drank a beer made with Eucalyptus leaves from the farm on which the brewery is located - but Eucalyptus are non-indigenous trees...); but we soon run into this problem of what makes something local and true to the region? I am not sure, maybe we have lost all ties to history and place-bound things, and everything is marketing!
Sorry for the long comment and the quasi-rant. I hope I understood your post correctly! Anyways, glad you had a good beer - the stout looked amazing. Enjoy!
I appreciate the comment. Those are valid points. In the case of the SAPA's and CPA's I think it makes sense if all of the breweries in the area do a unique process or uses a unique ingredient that adds a very distinclty regional quality to a product. Kind of like how certain regions have specific traditions or cultural delicacies. Like regions that are known for a special kind of cheese or something. Otherwise it's just marketing I think.
For sure. And that is the sad part I think currently most of it is marketing. I say this because on the labels and on the bottles, there is no attempt at making it explicit why it would be uniquely South African or Capetonian. One would think that that would be one of the selling points and that the brewers would highlight this even just on the label. For example, we have so much edible fynbos (indigenous plants) that could be used in the brewing process, making it uniquely local in terms of ingredients, or Sorghum beer which is indigenous beer with its own brewing process, but none of these are explored and experimented with.
Interesting. It's too bad that no one has tried experimenting with those ingredients
Sorry for the lang delay in reply! It seems like my life is always just a battle of making time work but I rarely get it to work!
There are some experimentation with it, but not enough. I know making malted sorghum is tricky as when you do not do it right, there can grow some harmful bacteria (if then ingested) for us humans.
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