A beer pioneer, South Africa's first Black female brewery owner trains a
new generation
[July 07, 2025] By
MICHELLE GUMEDE
JOHANNESBURG (AP) — 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.
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Students prepare to brew beer with South African beer brewing master
Apiwe Nxusani-Mawela, in Johannesburg, South Africa, Thursday, June
5, 2025. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay)
 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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