South African Beer Safari

Brew Your Own readers including Publisher Brad Ring explored South Africa’s vibrant craft beer scene before ending with a thrilling wildlife safari experience.

Over the course of five days this group of 18 North American homebrewers met with outgoing local pro brewers in the greater Cape Town and Winelands region happy to answer questions while we enjoyed sampling their beers and touring their breweries. And along the way we enjoyed South Africa’s delicious cuisine including an authentic braai (barbeque) at Woodstock Brewing in Cape Town with plates filled with local boerewors sausage, pork ribs, and steak.

One of the beer highlights of the trip was spending an afternoon with several dozen homebrewers from around Cape Town. After a warm welcome, we enjoyed drinking their homebrews made with South African hops especially for this meet-up. It was a wonderful chance to trade brewing tips and make new homebrew friends halfway around the world. In the end we chose a winner from among the South African hopped homebrews that will now be brewed locally on a commercial scale at Shackleton Brewing. We also had the chance to purchase some hard-to-get South African hops as special souvenirs to bring back home to North America for future brews.

We had other unique experiences with African brewing ingredients. Umqombothi is a traditional wild-fermented African beer made from sorghum and corn for special family celebrations. You drink it together as a group out of a clay pot only a few days after the wild yeasts on the grains start fermenting and as a result it tastes slightly sweet and a bit sour.

The group got to enjoy this indigenous cloudy brew — you could call it the original hazy beer — at an award-winning brewery in the Cape Winelands region called Soul Barrel that champions the use of traditional African ingredients. We also enjoyed a barrel sample of their Wild African Soul, an amazing blend of Umqombothi and Soul Barrel’s mixed culture farmhouse ale that won the 2025 Best Beer in Africa award at the Africa Beer Cup competition.

Every stop we made was filled with smiles, friendly brewers, and great craft beer. From drinking pints in a parking lot with the locals outside Charlie’s Garage Craft Brewery, to tank samples of fresh hefeweizen at Franschhoek Beer Company, to great beers and food looking over the ocean at Aegir Project, to a wonderful lineup of lagers at Cape Brewing, it was truly special. Plus, South Africa is probably the only place on Earth where you can visit a colony of playful wild penguins and tour two breweries in the same afternoon!

A huge thank you to our South African beer guide Lucy Corne for an amazing job. Lucy is a force in South Africa’s craft beer industry running the Africa Beer Cup competition, the BeerEx conference, and writing countless articles and books promoting craft beer across the African continent including writing for BYO. Our group had the special beer experiences and truly warm welcomes from local pro and homebrewers thanks to her.

After five full days packed with unique and special beer experiences, the group switched gears and headed over to other side of South Africa for a once-in-a-lifetime, four-day safari. Staying in a beautiful lodge, we climbed into specially outfitted Toyota Land Cruisers each day in the early morning and late afternoon for game drives that exceeded all expectations.

Each safari drive brought new up-close viewings of rhinos, lions, giraffes, hippos, leopards, and more. And every afternoon we stopped to have a “sundowner” beer during our drives to watch jaw-dropping African sunsets in one of the most scenic settings ever for happy hour. It was a thrilling way to wrap up our memorable BYO trip to South Africa.

Our next BYO trip with space available will be stateside in New England combining baseball and beer next August 2–7, 2026. Details on how you can visit nine local craft breweries including classics like Allagash and Treehouse, plus attend three minor league games in Maine, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts before the finale with a Boston Red Sox game at Fenway Park can be found at byo.com/trip. We hope you can join us on a future BYO trip. Cheers!