A beer pioneer, South Africa's first Black female brewery owner trains a new generation

JOHANNESBURG — After pouring brown, gritty liquid from a huge silver tank into a flute-like container known as a refractometer, South African beer brewing master Apiwe Nxusani-Mawela gives an expert nod of approval and passes it around to her students, who yell their observations with glee.

''When you are brewing you must constantly check your mixture,'' Nxusani-Mawela instructs them. ''We are looking for a balance between the sugar and the grains.''

The 41-year-old Nxusani-Mawela is an international beer judge and taster, and is believed to be the first Black woman in South Africa to own a craft brewery, a breakthrough in a world largely dominated by men and big corporations. Her desire is to open South Africa's multibillion-dollar beer-brewing industry to more Black people and more women.

At her microbrewery in Johannesburg, she's teaching 13 young Black graduates — most of them women — the art of beer making.

The science behind brewing

The students at the Brewsters Academy have chemical engineering, biotechnology or analytical chemistry degrees and diplomas, but are eager to get themselves an extra qualification for a possible career in brewing.

Wearing hairnets and armed with barley grains and water, the scientists spend the next six hours on the day's lesson, learning how to malt, mill, mash, lauter, boil, ferment and filter to make the perfect pale ale.

''My favorite part is the mashing," said Lerato Banda, a 30-year-old chemical engineering student at the University of South Africa who has dreams of owning her own beer or beverage line. She's referring to the process of mixing crushed grains with hot water to release sugars, which will later ferment. "It's where the beer and everything starts.''

Nxusani-Mawela's classes began in early June. Students will spend six months exploring beer varieties, both international and African, before another six months on work placement.

Beer is for everyone

Nxusani-Mawela's Tolokazi brewery is in the Johannesburg suburb of Wynberg, wedged between the poor Black township of Alexandra on one side and the glitzy financial district of Sandton — known as Africa's richest square mile — on the other.

She hails from the rural town of Butterworth, some 1,000 kilometers (621 miles) away, and first came across the idea of a career in beer at a university open day in Johannesburg. She started brewing as an amateur in 2007. She has a microbiology degree and sees beer making as a good option for those with a science background.

''I sort of fell in love with the combination of the business side with the science, with the craftsmanship and the artistic element of brewing,'' she said.

For the mother of two boys, beer brewing is also ripe for a shakeup.

''I wanted to make sure that being the first Black female to own a brewery in South Africa, that I'm not the first and the last,'' she said. ''Brewsters Academy for me is about transforming the industry ... What I want to see is that in five, 10 years from now that it should be a norm to have Black people in the industry, it should be a norm to have females in the industry."

South Africa's beer industry supports more than 200,000 jobs and contributes $5.2 billion to South Africa's gross domestic product, according to the most current Oxford Economics research in ''Beer's Global Economic Footprint.'' While South Africa's brewing sector remains male-dominated, like most places, efforts are underway to include more women.

One young woman at the classes, 24-year-old Lehlohonolo Makhethe, noted women were historically responsible for brewing beer in some African cultures, and she sees learning the skill as reclaiming a traditional role.

"How it got male dominated, I don't know,'' Makhethe said. ''I'd rather say we are going back to our roots as women to doing what we started.''

With an African flavor

While Nxusani-Mawela teaches all kinds of styles, she also is on a mission to keep alive traditional African beer for the next generation. Her Wild African Soul beer, a collaboration with craft beer company Soul Barrel Brewing, was the 2025 African Beer Cup champion. It's a blend of African Umqombothi beer — a creamy brew incorporating maize and sorghum malt — with a fruity, fizzy Belgian Saison beer.

''Umqombothi is our African way, and everybody should know how to make it, but we don't,'' she said. ''I believe that the beer styles that we make need to reflect having an element of our past being brought into the future.''

She's used all sorts of uniquely African flavors in her Tolokazi line, including the marula fruit and the rooibos bush that's native to South Africa and better-known for being used in a popular caffeine-free tea.

''Who could have thought of rooibos beer?'' said Lethabo Seipei Kekae after trying the beer for the first time at a beer festival. ''It's so smooth. Even if you are not a beer drinker, you can drink it.''

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