Twisted Toast

Toast-label-front1By Jian Reis, chief digital officer at hybrid marketing and brand content agency Twisted Toast Digital. “We know so much about the beer-making process, we should brew our own beer!”

Simple words spoken half in jest by our creative director, Erik Verster, as he worked on an animation detailing the beer brewing process for our client SABMiller Group Technical. And yet, within a few weeks, we were doing just that.

Twistedtoast_2It was perhaps inevitable – we’re a young, energetic, creative agency passionate about good food and drink, so when our work for SABMiller took us down the path of how to brew beer, it was almost guaranteed we’d try our hand at it.

A trip to the SAB brewery at Alrode and a tour with master brewer Anton Erasmus certainly didn’t diminish our enthusiasm.

We did research on how to get started, found a local supplier (BrewCraft) and purchased our first homebrew starter kit. While we knew the basics of commercial beer-brewing inside-out by this stage, we did a bit of extra research on home brewing and watched a few YouTube videos to make sure we were on the right track. (As we intended brewing in our office, we also had to convince our landlord that everything will go smoothly.)

Making the first batch was an exciting process as we laid out the kit and prepped our work area in our store room. Not wanting to be too brave, for our first batch we used the beer mix that was bundled with our beer kit, which turned out to be a very drinkable if somewhat ordinary Munich Lager.

TwistedToast_1By the time we were ready to start on our second batch we were feeling a lot more confident and decided to go for a beer that more closely reflected our own creativity and spirit.

We consulted Antoinette Phillips at BrewCraft to assist in selecting a recipe, and after long discussion, the brew we ended up with was a rich, warm honey Duvel that turned out to be a sheer delight.

We named it TOAST Homebru, the breakfast of champions and designed branding labels to match.

Brewing our own beer has been a process that has been enormously entertaining and even more rewarding. It has given us a newfound respect, appreciation and taste for beer and considering how easy it is to get started, it’s definitely something we’d recommend. Especially at the office!