Blacktoberfest - South Africa

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Black Brew Culture (USA) and Brewsters Craft (South Africa) present the first annual Soweto Blacktoberfest Beer Experience 2021, in partnership with Be Brave Lifestyle and The Box Shop Lifestyle on Vilakazi Street in Soweto! This unique and historic event is a month-long observance of Black beer and food culture that culminates in a virtual and live event. It will be held simultaneously in North Carolina and Soweto on October 9th, 2021 — for the very first time!

Beer brewing in Soweto has a colourful and fascinating history that goes back to apartheid South African times. In 1927, the South African apartheid government passed the Liquor Act, which prohibited non-white South Africans from entering licensed premises or selling alcohol. The passing of the law saw the rise of South Africa's shebeens and the powerful women who operated them, called "shebeen Queens." Shebeens were illicit bars selling unlicensed "umqombhoti" (African beer). These illegal drinking holes were run in people’s homes and yards and became meeting places for political meetings and gatherings. Although illegal, shebeens provided a place for Black South Africans to meet, socialize and party during a difficult period.

In 2020, Year One of this historic collaboration, seven renowned Black craft breweries united at the state-of-the art facility of an eighth, where they embarked on what would become an annual tradition of inspiration, collaboration and fellowship: the brewing of a Blacktoberfest beer. The 2021 celebration will honor the diaspora and welcome the inevitable brilliance, created and conceived when the U.S. and the Motherland collaborate and raise glasses of beer to each other. 

Building on the collaboration that resulted in the first Blacktoberfest Marzen-Style Ale in 2020, Black American brewers will join forces with their kettle kin in Africa to create this year's undeniable flavor of creativity: Blacktoberfest T.A.B.T., an intercontinental-collaboration beer featuring grains and adjuncts from farmers across the Atlantic Ocean. The union will join together brewers from South Africa and the United States to culminate in united, simultaneous festivals between Black Brew Culture in Durham, North Carolina and Brewsters Craft Brewery in Soweto, Johannesburg, South Africa. 

Even better: While Black American brewers craft and pour their 2021 T.A.B.T. beer at our physical fests in Durham and Los Angeles, a mix of brewers in Soweto will have created, in their space and home nation, the Blacktoberfest Marzen-Style Ale recipe we debuted last year.