Who wants their beer to taste like chocolate, orange or lemon? Many people apparently. So many in fact that South African Breweries is relaunching Castle Chocolate Milk Stout and, it says, it is here to stay.
The sweet malt may hold a different position in the flavour spectrum from the beverage giant’s recently launched citrus-flavoured Flying Fish beers but it does seem to be part of the same revolution.
SAB announced this week that “beer aficionados” ( (and chocolate fanciers, one might guess) who had failed to get their hands on last year’s limited edition run of Castle Milk Stout Chocolate would now have their chance to say a chocolatey cheers. The brand is being released and is expected to be on shelves around the country from later this month.
Hops is hip these days and it seems that just as fast as a new niche is defined a craft beer magically appears to fill it. That may be so, Cape Town-based Belgian brewer Alexandre Tilmans told ANA, but milk stout is not beer, “Chocolate Milk Stout is in fact an industrial dark ale (the opposite of craft).”
Robyn Chalmers, head of media and communications at South African Breweries, added: “SAB does not make craft beer since our volumes are too large to be considered craft.”
In some cases the line may get a little blurred, for example when the international parent group SABMiller, owner of big brands such as Peroni and Grolsh, acquired Meantime Brewing Company, one of the pioneers of Britain’s craft brewing movement, in May.
It is not hard to see why the brewing giant would be thirsty for some of this market. At the time of the acquisition, SABMIller said, sales volumes of Meantime’s beers including London Pale Ale and London Lager had grown by 58 percent in 2014, compared with a one percent rise in Britain’s beer market as a whole.
Craft question
Whether or not these brews can still be described as craft now that they are in the hands of a large industrial brewing company is a moot point. Purists will say absolutely not, many of them crying foul as they did when Anheuser-Busch InBev, another large multi-national brewer, consumed several US craft beer brands including Goose Island, Blue Point and 10 Barrels, over recent years.
The title craft brewer definitely does not fit the big breweries as it does the independent, often bearded “garagistes” who brew beer in buckets in their garage, but it seems clear that the small and big players all have a role to play in the development of this fledgling industry that has much potential.
Tilmans, owner of the two-year-old Belgian brand Leopold7, which will soon be brewed in South Africa, says: “There are are around 35 micro-brewers in and around Cape Town and a total of 60 in the country. Most of them are garage brewers and have little impact on the market in terms of volume. They do have a big impact in terms of education, and showing that different products exist.
“If you remove all garagiste brewers in Cape Town you are left with three or four micro-breweries,” he added.
He said SAB was supportive of those in the craft industry, whose efforts to spread the word are effectively “free advertising … about beer and less about wine or other spirits”.
He added: “The more people speak about beer the more likely it is that they will have one.”
SAB’s Chalmers said: “South Africa remains a growth market and SAB is committed to promoting the reputation of beer and building the beer category within South Africa.”
Tilmans says there was still a lot of room for growth. “Craft beer is about one percent of the total market, and maybe two to three percent of the affluent/trendy/medium class market. It means there is still 97 percent to conquer!”
In the US, he said, craft brewers had grown to take about 11 percent of the market share. Tilmans also looks to his native Belgium for an idea of what is to come in South Africa.
“There are about 145 micro-breweries for 10 million people in a country the size of the peninsula,” Tilmans says, “so you had better have a unique, different and good product.”
That is what SAB says it is providing the market with their new Castle Chocolate Milk Stout. Julian Remba, Castle Milk Stout general manager, told ANA: “Castle Milk Stout is South Africa’s most popular stout, and with its origins of being the original beer which is different to all others in colour, texture and flavour thanks to its dark roasted malt, it stands to reason we want to continue innovating.”
ANA