Beer of the week: The Pitter

The Pitter, Clockwork Brewhouse at the Willowton Tea Factory, R30 for 500ml draft, currently only available at festivals

The Pitter, Clockwork Brewhouse at the Willowton Tea Factory, R30 for 500ml draft, currently only available at festivals

The Willowton Tea Factory (WTF) is a tiny co-operative brewery in a not particularly well maintained industrial park in Pietermaritzburg. It's staffed by three affable, super-hospitable brewers - Megan Gemmel (Clockwork Brewhouse), Dion van Huyssteen (Doctrine Brewing) and Travis Boast (Mo'Gravity) - who met at the local homebrewing club and decided to join forces. The brewery isn't particularly swish; their mash tun hangs from a chain, and, despite an obsessive approach to hygiene, they seem to have a problem with fruit flies. WTF, indeed. But it's not about being swish, it's about enjoyment. There's a childish joy here, and it shows in their beers.

Doctrine's Harbinger Amber Lager - laced with East Kent Goldings and what should be an excessive amount of roasted malt - really should be ridiculous. But once you get past the shock of drinking a lager/rauchbier hybrid, it's satisfying; smooth and smoky, finishing clean.

"It started as a joke," says Van Huyssteen, "but I just kept drinking it." Boast concurs: "It's actually one of my favourite beers at the moment."

Maybe Boast likes it so much because he is a connoisseur of the brewing bizarre. His Serendipity is a weird cross between a French Biere de Garde and an English brown ale, which he terms a "European mild". It's a good bitter at any rate, with heady crystal malt esters and bags of red fruit.

Gemmel is a meticulous brewer - she is a microbiologist, after all - and her beers are perhaps the most accomplished of WTF's output. Her ESB is simple and sophisticated, a gorgeous amber sipper with a rich crystal nose and a dry, bitter mineral finish. That's not to say that she doesn't experiment. The brown-red Clockwork Pitter - a porter/bitter hybrid - is just begging to be aged in a brandy barrel: a caramel nose, leading into toffee, plum, hop spice, hints of dark chocolate and a slight roast finish. It's not going to win any points for stylistic adherence, but it's still a lovely beer.

Which I suppose is the point of WTF: don't we all like to be a bit anti-establishment?