AtlasSouth Africa1 on record

South Africa

Southern Africa

Two beer cultures running in parallel: industrial lager since 1895, and umqombothi, a thick sorghum and maize beer still brewed at home for ceremonies. Neither has replaced the other.

Beers on record

Brewing since

1895

PlateSouth Africa1 town

Fig. 2. Circle area is beers on record for that town. Labels appear as room allows, so zooming in reveals towns rather than enlarging them. Only towns whose coordinates could be sourced are drawn, so an unmarked town means a missing coordinate rather than a town without beer. Tiles from OpenFreeMap and OpenMapTiles, data from OpenStreetMap.

Towns as a table1

Towns in South Africa with beers on record
Town	Beers
Johannesburg	1

Styles here

Pale Lager1

On the recordcounted from 1 beer

The record here

Breweries1
Towns1
Styles1

Oldest brewery with a sourced year: South African Breweries, 1895.

Oldest beer with a sourced year: Castle Lager, 1895.

These are facts about this record, not about the world. They are counted from the beers on file, and the atlas is only as deep as its sources: 74% of everything it holds is American or Dutch, because that is what the bulk import reached, not because that is where beer is. So the styles most often recorded in South Africa are not necessarily the ones most often brewed there, and a country with few beers here has a thin record rather than a thin brewing scene.

1 beer

Castle Lager

Johannesburg, South Africa · 1895