After 20 years on tap at the V&A Waterfront’s Den Anker restaurant in Cape Town, a bottled, locally brewed version of their popular Anker Golden Bier is now available in South Africa. Called Anker Brew, the bottled version is being produced based on the original recipe created by Denis Bouckaert, the founder of the iconic Belgian restaurant.
Anker Brew pours a rich golden-brown, slightly coppery colour, with a white head. Its soft, grainy aroma with hints of oranges and caramel is enticing and its mouth is light but flavourful, with ample carbonation. Smooth, slightly citrusy hop bitterness carries the beer back effortlessly, leaving a perfectly dry bitterness on one’s tongue, preparing one for the next sip. As the beer warms, its ale characters emerge. It becomes creamier and more intensely citrusy, though remaining subtle, and is joined by a floral background, reminiscent of acacia flowers and gum.
Those unfamiliar with ales would find it to be similar to a good, flavourful lager — a beer one could easily drink very many of — but Anker Brew is a very accomplished and clean, style-true Belgian ale.
A Belgian and his brew
The story of Anker Brew goes back to 1996, when, just as the second wave of microbreweries headed by Birkenhead, Old Cape Ale, Notties and Firkins, were being set up in South Africa, Bouckaert started brewing Anker Bier. Stronger, Trappist beers that were typically imported for his restaurant seemed to only appeal to a small portion of his clientele: those familiar with the more powerful, headier styles of beer that hailed from monasteries in his home country. Most South African beer drinkers had a somewhat abridged sense of what beer should be — the typical, lighter and blander styles of beer that were commercially brewed at home. What was needed was an ale that would appeal to these light lager drinkers, not overwhelming them with the typical fruity, flowery flavours and high alcohol of monastery ales, but also not quite as one-dimensional as the local fare. A Belgian Golden Ale seemed the exact beer to fill this void.
According to business entrepreneur, Rejeanne Vlietman, General Manager of Den Anker Restaurant, and Director of the Belgian Beer Company no local brewery at the time was brewing anything close to what came from Belgium, and Bouckaert opted for the Proef Brouwerij in Lochristi, close to his home town of Ghent in East Flanders, a small, cutting-edge contract brewer and brewing school, known for its integrity and quality. Bouckaert’s brainchild, Anker Bier, was born.
“It happened to me. Why? I don’t know,” mulled Bouckaert. “Maybe a midlife crisis. As if building a new house, buying a sports car, moving to South Africa and getting married (again) was not enough. On top of this, I had to brew my own beer.”
That said, Bouckaert was no stranger to beer. Having set up the Heineken brewery in Congo and functioned as Director of Heineken, Africa, not to mention owning three pubs in Ghent, he might have brewed and sold enough beer, by his own estimate, to fill Cape Town Harbour. His recipe had to accomplish seemingly contradictory goals: an appealing, light and flavourful house beer for Den Anker that would survive the trip over the ocean to South Africa.
Unfortunately, Bouckaert passed away in 2004, leaving Den Anker in the ready hands of Vlietmanwho had worked at Den Anker since her student days And swiftly rose to the position of the restaurant’s General Manager and more recently founded the now well-known importer of premium Belgian Beers in South Africa, The Belgian Beer Co. “It was really hard to continue the restaurant after Denis’ death,” says Vlietman. But the drive was there and Bouckaert’s legacy survived.
Vlietman has driven the realisation of this new concrete symbol of Denis’ legacy: the just launched bottled, locally brewed Anker Brew. She says: “The brew is what Bouckaert used to call a truly protestant expression of Trappist ale.”
