Every year since 2012 Brewing UCT have managed to specialise and win in a new category at the SAB Intervarsity Beer Brewing competition held annually at the SAB World of Learning in Johannesburg.

This year on 30 August, the BUCT team who are sponsored by CeBER and comprised of UCT chemical engineering postgraduate students, secured first prize in the Cider Category – an improvement on last year’s second prize in the same grouping.

Team captain Brian Willis explains that their Intang-Apple Cider was a blend of two others that were fermented with different yeasts, an English ale yeast and a wine yeast, to impart diverse characteristics: “We did a blind tasting of a range of blends of the two until an appetising ratio was found. This allowed us to obtain a level of complexity not obtainable from a single yeast.”

Fellow BUCT team mate, Catherine Edward, described the competition weekend as festive and informative. Of the 14 teams represented, Catherine reported a “definite sense of comradery between the Western Cape Teams” which included Stellies and this year’s overall winners CPUT.

In addition to the competition itself, the teams were invited to attend seminars, presentations and a brewing demonstration by one of the brew masters of SAB. As a sweet finish, SAB Miller has further inspired teams to improve their breweries and beers by donating money to all the universities for brewery upgrades.

Congratulations to the 11 members of Brewing UCT which include two academic staff members, Dr Siew Tai and Dr Robert Huddy; a post-doc, Dr Melinda Griffiths; 3 PhD Students – Brian Willis, Durgaprasad Madras Iyer and Alex Opitz; and 5 MSc students – Mark Kerr, Catherine Edward, Jonathan Dean, Dereck Ndoro and Bronwyn White. Good luck for the upcoming competitions in the remainder of the year.

Article and photograph by Candice Mazzolini