It was a first in the history of the South African National Homebrew Champs competition: in 2019, a participant submitted a hybrid of the traditional African beer Umqombothi and what is known in South Africa as “clear beer,” or to most people, just beer. The pioneering entry also prompted another first: never before in the competition’s six-year history had judges refused to score a beer.
It wasn’t that the beer was undrinkable. The judges simply didn’t know how to assess it.
“We felt that the beer, an Umqombothi-sorghum Wheat Beer hybrid, was entered in the wrong category, and so couldn’t score it,” says Cameron Gray, former president of Cape Town’s homebrewing club and a judge that day. “In retrospect I think we made a mistake, but as a judging panel none of us had the context on how to judge, compare, or score Umqombothi, sadly.”
Although South Africa’s craft beer boom only began about 10 years ago, the country has a brewing tradition that stretches back millennia in the form of Umqombothi, its ancient sorghum beer. In recent years, while the country’s beer fans have embraced Pale Ales and Lagers, Umqombothi has languished as an overlooked relic, most commonly found in rural areas. But today, a few of South Africa’s new microbreweries are starting to turn to eons-old Umqombothi for inspiration, incorporating the distinct flavor profile of the sour, sorghum-based beer into their modern recipes.
To taste Umqombothi is to take a practical lesson in the history of beer. Most enthusiasts have some notion about the drink’s porridge-like beginnings, with beer becoming clearer, crisper, cooler, and more carbonated as technology grew more advanced. But not in the case of traditional Umqombothi. I remember the first time I tried it. I’d never before seen something quite that color, a kind of milky, grayish pink. On top lay a crown of bubbly foam, akin to milk that had been frothed in a blender, except it too was that same shade of peachy-gray.
The beer is typically sipped from a communal vessel—in rural ceremonies, often a carefully crafted clay pot called an ukhamba; in the case of my first sip, a small stainless steel bucket passed around the room. I gently blew away the foam, as demonstrated by my host, then took the tiniest of sips. I was not sure what to make of it. Umqombothi shares almost nothing in common with its modern-day counterpart. It is uncarbonated and thick, almost gritty, with particles of grain suspended in the beer.
Though it is generally referred to in southern Africa as “sorghum beer”—Umqombothi is mainly made from malted sorghum, a gluten-free grain used throughout southern Africa as a foodstuff—it also contains a hearty helping of crushed maize. True to ancient approaches to brewing, the beer undergoes a wild fermentation and the results display lactic sourness, notes of green apple, and often a distinct barnyard funk. Although the beer goes by many names, the word “Umqombothi” is recognized by speakers of all 11 of South Africa's national languages.
For those who are new to it, Umqombothi is definitely an acquired taste, as virtually everything about it will seem unfamiliar. The sourness and milky texture together make the initiate think of spoiled milk or yoghurt, the texture leaves you self-consciously wiping flecks of grain from your lips after each sip, and the only other foodstuff I can think of in that hue is Ethiopia and Eritrea’s injera, a fermented flatbread made from teff flour. Not many outsiders fall in love with it on the first sip, but if you grew up around it, the smell and taste of Umqombothi are the very essence of home.
Though Lethu Tshabangu now lives in Cape Town, he grew up in rural Zimbabwe. Along with his wife, Nolu Roxwana-Matiwane, he founded Cape Town’s Ukhamba Beerworx in 2015. Brewing has always been a part of his life, he says, with some of his fondest childhood memories revolving around household brew days. In southern African culture, brewing is often a task that falls to women. In Tshabangu’s home, it was his grandmother who took on the role.
“My mom can’t make it,” Tshabangu says with a smile. “It just never ferments. But my grandmother—her beer was known throughout the village.”
I am sitting with Tshabangu and his business partner and fellow Zimbabwean, Goodman Ncube, in their Cape Town taproom. I came to discuss an Umqombothi-inspired event for South African National Beer Day, but I end up sticking around all afternoon, sipping on Ukhamba’s Utywala Sorghum Saison and lapping up Tshabangu and Ncube’s stories. They speak with infectious enthusiasm, and despite the fact they didn’t know each other growing up, their stories overlap, demonstrating a deep, shared passion for traditional beer.
“The tradition of brewing and enjoying sorghum beer is sadly being lost in South Africa,” Tshabangu says. However, he notes, it is still very prominent in Zimbabwe. “Every liquor store sells it there. It’s delivered in what is basically a fuel tanker. Then there are beer gardens where you get a container straight from the tank and sit and drink with friends.”
“Although South Africa’s craft beer boom only began about 10 years ago, the country has a brewing tradition that stretches back millennia in the form of Umqombothi, its traditional sorghum beer.”
“You get it in five-liter containers,” Ncube says. I try to imagine sipping through more than 10 pints of the heavy, filling brew, even with a drinking buddy to help out. “We could easily do away with 20 liters in an afternoon between a group of us,” he adds, grinning as he gets lost in happy memories of home. The beer is typically very low in alcohol—usually no more than about 3% ABV—although it does gently continue fermenting throughout its short lifespan.
Long before he was allowed to drink it, Tshabangu fell in love with the process. He recounts brewing tales from his childhood, remembering his grandmother admitting how quickly her heart would beat when she went to check on the fermentation, or how it was a good omen to find a bee in the house on a brew day. Most of all, he recalls day two of the five-day brewing process, when the children would each be dished up a serving of umhiqo, a sour sorghum-and-maize porridge that’s a byproduct of Umqombothi production.
“All of your friends would come to your home to take some umhiqo,” Tshabangu recalls with a grin. “But then as a child, your time is done. After this stage, the brew is left to ferment and the beer itself is of course consumed by adults, almost always to mark a special occasion.”
Tshabangu became interested in craft beer while working behind the bar at a city-center food market. He soon started homebrewing, and after a stint with a brewing cooperative, launched Ukhamba’s first taproom in Woodstock, a semi-industrial neighborhood that has become Cape Town’s craft beer hub.
As well as producing excellent versions of his favorite style, American IPA, Tshabangu was intent on somehow uniting the traditional beer he grew up around with modern craft brewing. “The first time I had a Farmhouse Ale, I knew it was the style that would best carry sorghum,” he says. “Some of the flavor notes in Farmhouse Ales are quite similar to those found in Umqombothi, so I knew this would be the way to go.”
Rather than risk a wild fermentation, as is traditional with Umqombothi, Tshabangu decided to use Saison yeast—he finds it replicates some of the fruitiness of traditional beer, albeit in a more subtle way. After playing around with the recipe, he settled on a grain bill of 60% malted barley and 40% malted sorghum, the latter giving a somewhat earthy character to the beer.
Ukhamba’s Saison was the first craft beer in South Africa to attempt to merge the traditional with the modern, resulting in a beverage that’s both accessible and distinct, and which has won a strong local following. It has also served as something of a crossover, enticing appreciators of traditional African beer as well as craft aficionados.
It was this spirit of coming together that Cape Town’s homebrewing club wanted to harness for South African National Beer Day. The day has been celebrated on the first Saturday in February since 2017, but until this year, none of the 100-plus annual events had ever raised a glass to traditional beer, focusing instead on craft breweries and the country’s massive Lager brands. But in a bid to make the occasion truly about all South African beers, Cape Town’s homebrewing club, the SouthYeasters, teamed up with Ukhamba co-founder Roxwana-Matiwane to host an Umqombothi brew day and tasting at one of the city’s favorite craft beer hangouts, Banana Jam Café.
Though I have been involved with the club for almost 10 years, this was the first time I can recall traditional beer ever featuring in a meeting, event, or competition. The restaurant was packed on the first Saturday in February as homebrewers and beer lovers gathered around the fire to watch Roxwana-Matiwane brew a beer that has been made in a similar way for thousands of years. While the pot reached a simmer on the open flame, she dished out tasters of a batch she’d whipped up earlier that week.
Responses were mixed. For some, it took them back to their youth, where Umqombothi was always available on the farm where they grew up. Others had never so much as seen a traditional African brew before. On sipping, several drinkers screwed up their faces before exclaiming, “That’s not beer!”
For those accustomed to sours and wild-fermented beers, though, there are some recognizable qualities. When I first tasted Umqombothi as an eager backpacker almost 20 years ago, I couldn’t find anything familiar or indeed even likable about the brew. But on a visit to Botswana last year, I sampled it for the first time in years and realized my tastes had changed. I’d expected to take a polite sip before discreetly placing the glass to one side. Instead, I found myself going back for a second sip, and then a third. In the intervening years, I had come to enjoy the occasional Gueuze, Lambic, or American Wild Ale. I suddenly discovered that my taste buds didn’t find the traditional brew to be quite so alien after all.
It is this affinity to Wild Ales that drew Nick Smith to Umqombothi—that, and its ancient history and place in southern African culture.
“For me it’s a no-brainer,” says Smith, whose brewery, Soul Barrel Brewing Company, is based in the Cape Winelands region, about an hour’s drive from Cape Town. “It checks all the boxes. It’s local, it has a distinct brewing heritage, it uses distinct local ingredients and mixed fermentation. Umqombothi is everything that craft beer should be about. Why would I not want to take inspiration from it?”
American-born Smith opened his brewery in South Africa in 2018, focusing on hop-forward ales, barrel-aged brews, wild fermentations, and local ingredients. Earlier this year he created the country’s first commercial Umqombothi/clear beer blend in partnership with brewmaster and sorghum beer expert Apiwe Nxusani-Mawela.
“True to ancient beer styles, the beer undergoes a wild fermentation and the resulting brew displays lactic sourness, notes of green apple, and often a distinct barnyard funk.”
“We had been talking for ages about doing something that marries traditional beer and craft,” Smith says. “Then we decided to set something up for South African National Beer Day and once it was on the calendar I was like, right: I need to get a handle on this.” He set about brewing a series of small batches of Umqombothi, experimenting with different methods and ingredients and taking notes on the process and the resulting flavor profiles. “It’s really very ‘crafty.’ It’s a fascinating process that, while not generally explained in scientific terms, has a lot of similarities to brewing as we know it.”
The Umqombothi brewing process takes about five days and kicks off with the mash, where the sorghum and maize are steeped overnight in warm water, creating sugars for fermentation and a lactic sourness that follows through to the end product. On day two, further water is added and the mixture is boiled for an hour. It is at this stage that a few bowls of umhiqo are scooped off for lucky kids to devour with a sprinkling of sugar. The rest is left to cool overnight.
To kick off fermentation, the next day an extra helping of malted sorghum is added to the mixture and the wild yeast found on the grain left to do its work overnight. Day four is lautering time, when the liquid is removed from the grains using a strainer, sieve or cheesecloth. Unlike the beers we are generally more familiar with, a certain amount of solids remain suspended in the liquid. As the day goes by, bubbles will continue to rise to the surface, proving that the ancestors have blessed the brew and that fermentation is taking place. Day five is drinking day, when the brew is shared from a communal pot, served cool but not cold, neither carbonated nor filtered.
An age-old process, brewing Umqombothi relies more on intuition than science. There are no thermometers, refractometers, or hydrometers—just people who learned the skill from their mothers and grandmothers.
“Umqombothi is typically only brewed for special occasions such as weddings, traditional ceremonies and such,” says Nxusani-Mawela, who is also the founder of Brewsters Craft in Johannesburg. “As people leave their rural roots and move to the cities, fewer and fewer are learning to brew sorghum beer. As it is a five-day process, they tend to arrive home in time for the event, but will have missed the brewing of the beer and so the knowledge is not being passed down.”
It was shortly after getting a job with South African Breweries (SAB) in 2007 that Nxusani-Mawela first joined her mother and aunts in brewing Umqombothi. “My father had asked me to come home to give thanks to the ancestors for having finished varsity [university] and started a job. It was the first time I had really paid attention to the traditional brewing process,” she says. Since then, Nxusani-Mawela has set up her own craft brewery and has increasingly been experimenting with sorghum in her beers.
“I started with the Sorghum Pilsner last year,” she tells me. The grain bill only has 10% sorghum added to try and retain the classic profile of the Pilsner, but Nxusani-Mawela has been using greater proportions of sorghum in her Saison, Weiss, and African Pale Ale (the latter of which uses all South African hops). More and more, though, she is becoming known for her passion for spreading the good word of traditional sorghum beers.
Last September she ran a small Umqombothi homebrewing contest in Johannesburg and later teamed up with a local malted sorghum producer to run a series of masterclasses on traditional brewing. And then she and Smith began to work on the concept of a hybrid beer—one that would unite South Africa’s recent love for craft beer with its age-old brewing heritage.
Craft beer is often lauded for being innovative, but until recently, South African microbrewers had largely been content to follow international trends. They dabbled with Black IPAs in 2012, they released Brut IPAs in 2019, and of course there have been ongoing attempts to master the New England IPA. But as the industry approaches the end of its first decade in business, brewers are becoming more adventurous, and the desire to create a truly South African style is growing.
In late January, a couple of days before National Beer Day, Nxusani-Mawela boarded a plane from Johannesburg to Cape Town clutching a two-liter bottle of still-fermenting Umqombothi.
“I had to keep the lid unscrewed and keep checking on the pressure,” she says, laughing at the memory of the curious looks from those sitting around her. The beer was destined for the mouths and bellies of homebrewers and beer enthusiasts at Soul Barrel’s National Beer Day celebration.
As well as tasting a freshly brewed batch of traditional beer, attendees could see some of the Umqombothi brewing process at the event. “I had mashed the day before and left it to sour overnight,” says Smith, who wanted to be able to give his customers a hands-on introduction to what was, for most, a very unfamiliar style of beer. On the day, Nxusani-Mawela and Smith worked together on two 50-liter homebrew systems to boil the porridge-like brew. At the end of its five-day brewing life, the beer took up a new home in one of Smith’s repurposed wine barrels. “We ended up with about 80 liters of Umqombothi,” he says, “which we blended with 80 liters of a 100% Brettanomyces fermentation beer that had been aging in oak for a year, and 80 liters of the base beer for Live Culture, our house ale that is fermented with yeast harvested from indigenous vegetation.”
I sampled Wild African Soul, as the beer will be called, after it had spent a month in the barrel. Stewed stone fruit leaped out at me, followed by a long, lactic tartness and an underlying smoky character. Although it is unlikely to be something that people drink by the pint, sipped alongside a plate of local goat cheese, say, it will likely be a winner. When I asked Smith when the beer would be released, he shrugged with a half-smile. “No one has done this before, so we don’t really know what’s going to happen and where it will go,” he said. The hope is to release it towards the middle of the year.
“It’s local, it has a distinct brewing heritage, it uses distinct local ingredients and mixed fermentation. Umqombothi is everything that craft beer should be about. Why would I not want to take inspiration from it?”
Although this release marks the first time that a brewery has attempted to blend Umqombothi and clear beer, other South African craft breweries have included African ingredients in their brews. Earlier this year, Johannesburg-based OC Brewery released Jekyll & Hops, a Pale Ale made using sorghum and cassava alongside malted barley. Last year, two Cape-based brewers, Little Wolf Brewery and Stellenbosch Brewing Company, produced a one-off Sorghum Gose, which took a gold medal in the annual African Beer Cup. That same year, Cape Town brewpub Afro Caribbean Brewing Company welcomed Brooklyn Brewery’s brewmaster Garrett Oliver to join in making a collab Saison, using 30% sorghum malt as well as peel from fresh naartjie, a South African mandarin orange. Others have brewed with endemic South African plants, bringing rooibos, buchu (a fragrant plant used in traditional medicine), and fruit from the emblematic baobab tree.
It feels like a sign that the local craft beer industry is gaining confidence. Brewers have already produced world-class Stouts, fine IPAs, and crisp and refreshing Lagers. Now they are creating a truly indigenous style. And for Nxusani-Mawela, it hasn’t come a day too soon.
“We need to start making uniquely African beers,” she says. “My dream is to see beers that are using African ingredients being recognized on the global brewing stage. What I would really like to see is visitors coming to South Africa and tasting beers that they have never had in their life before, and that they couldn’t taste anywhere else in the world.”
When Wild African Soul is released, it will certainly fit this bill, although with no flights in or out of the country due to the pandemic, it’s likely that only those who live in South Africa will be able to taste it for a while. But for the moment, that is enough. The renaissance of Umqombothi should start at home. And if a few more local beer lovers, homebrewers and beer judges familiarize themselves with the characteristics of this traditional African beer, we can at least guarantee that the next time someone enters a uniquely South African brew into a competition, we’ll have the tasting tools to judge it.
Words by Lucy CorneIllustrations by Ben Chalapek
