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South AfricaShould you consider flying 12 hours non-stop from Dublin to Cape Town (longer in-direct) just to try a few beers? Definitely not! This is no London, Prague, or Bruges. This is SAB Miller country and what you are going to find in 99% of establishments is stuff of the yellow p**s variety, Castle Lager, Hansa pils, Black Label (Carling), Miller, if you're lucky Pilsner Urquell.

Should you consider travel to South Africa for just about any other reason? Definitely yes. The people are hugely warm, welcoming and friendly. There is something for everyone, Mediterranean climate, fantastic beaches, stunning mountain and desert scenery, vibrant cities. Then there is of course the animal life.

It is not a country without problems. A large amount of South Africans live in terrible poverty, while others live in European style luxury. There is crime but it is unlikely to affect tourists -- should you be unlucky it is usually only petty theft. AIDS is another big difficulty causing life expectancy in some of the townships to be as low as 42 years. However, there is a feeling that the country has moved on from its disturbing history and is working together for a better future. This hopefully can be achieved especially with a little help. This is what took me there with the Niall Mellon Township trust

Niall, an Irish property developer, was shocked to see the conditions many poor South Africans lived in. Using the skills he knew best, building, and with the help of a small band of volunteers he set about doing something for theses people. Not being a man to do things by halves, his trust has in 5 years mushroomed to be a major player building in the Townships

This year I was one of 1380 volunteers on 4 planeloads who flew out of Ireland with the aim of building 200 houses in a week. Each volunteer had raised €4000 (many raised much much more). This paid for our flight and accommodation the rest went to fund the building work. Not only for the 200 houses we were hoping to build, as the trust also has a full time local crew working who will build 5000 houses this year.

Freedom ParkNiall himself shook every volunteer's hand as we went through customs at the end of the long flight. Then a bus to the hotel, a quick beer (just one - honest) and bed at 3am. All too quickly it was 6.30am; time to get up for the briefing where we were divided into 17 different teams each with a different-coloured t-shirt. Then it was onto a fleet of dozens of buses to take us to Freedom Park, our building site for the week. As the buses left tourist Cape Town and entered the vast Mitchels plain in the Cape Flats area, as far as the eye could see for miles around were tiny shacks jammed up against one an other, most with no running water or sewerage. Then we noticed the people looking at us smiling, waving, clapping, giving us thumbs up. We were miles from the work site but I seems the whole of Township Cape Town knew who we were and what we were here to do.

On arrival all 1400 odd of us walked into the site being cheered by the local people standing outside their shacks. Hairy arsed, beer gutted, roughneck builders were openly seen shedding a tear.

The Garden of HopeThen it was down to work on the craziest, maddest building site I have ever seen. Blocklayers were putting up houses at a furious rate, chippies had the roof on before you could blink an eye every single person was giving their all. Dust storms raged, it poured with rain and the sun beat down on us. This mammoth task ran like clockwork. Health and safety were a priority with so many people on site, so locals were fenced out of the site. Work ended around 5pm and it was back to the fleet of buses and home to the hotel for a nice cup of tea and bed. Well OK not tea and bed in fact, because the hotel bar couldn't cope they put up a huge tent opposite with a 100 meter bar full of SAB delights. But all were aware it was a 6.30am start in the morning.

So on it went on for a week great friendships were made there were bust-ups, quickly forgotten, huge crac and banter and somehow we got our 200 houses built -- 203 in fact plus a community centre with a garden.

All to soon it was over. South Africans went out of their way to thank "the Irish builders". Looking round at the faces every single one of us looked exhausted but we felt elated. Many said it was a life changing experience. They are right of course the lives of thousands of people who will now live in good housing with sanitation their lives are now changed forever.

 

Back to the beer. Look hard enough and you will find something. South yeasters, a group of Cape beer heads perhaps a bit more established and organised than ourselves, pointed me to Mitchells knysna brewery the original Mitchells, started by a ex SAB guy called Alex Mitchell -. He sold part of his business to Andy Mitchell at Birkenhead Brewing and another bit to Athol Mitchell in central Cape Town

Three "A Mitchells", all in brewing, and not one related to another, real X File stuff!  Their Mitchels beers, Foresters Draught a lager and a good one, especially if you have been living on SAB products for some time. It is only lightly carbonated by European / American standards. However, it has to be said that most of the local brews seemed to be less carbonated than their northern hemisphere counterparts. The Bosuns Bitter pump was often installed and you could ask for a pint, but what came out was Foresters "it is Bousuns sir, it is a very light beer". I gave up but did find it on a couple of occasions and found it a good refreshing light ale great for a warm day.

There are a good few others, notably Boston Breweries, but I had no time to seek them out.

One beer that does deserve a mention is Windhoek Lager from Namibia Breweries, a better than average tipple, but the real gem is Windhoek Light at just 2.4% abv you would think this was not going to be up to much but it was definitely one of the best low alcohol beers I have ever tasted.

On my last night in Cape Town I met with Richard Whittaker, a South yeaster brewer. He invited me to his Swallow Brewery in what used to be his garage. It is now an envious set-up of a bar and brew room where along with fellow brewer Malcolm we spent an extremely enjoyable couple of hours being beer geeks. Tasting his excellent wit and bitter beers Malcolm brought some Boston breweries ale. We finished the evening sharing a bottle of mouth watering Norwegian beer the name of which is lost to me in the mists of time and alcohol all I can remember is it was 8.something abv perhaps the beer nut can enlighten me sometime. Richard kept the last drop to use the yeast, which is hard to come by in SA. The name south yeaster is to do with the southeast wind that is common in the Cape and the Afrikaans pronouncement of east

 

Niall Mellon is looking for 2008 volunteers in 2008. I intend to be one of them and Richard has suggested I bring more brewers and he will lay-on a mini festival / meet.

So any of you with vague / building / admin / medical / gardening skills, how about it?