Nick Mulgrew spoke to fellow beer writer Lucy Corne about her second book on South Africa's booming craft breweries What sparked your interest in beer?It started when my now-husband and I moved to South Korea. South Korean beer is awful - it's high in rice, so you have one pint and it feels like you've had 17. So we homebrewed. One day we looked up the Seoul homebrewing club, and the person who ran it - in a city of ten million people - happened to live in our building. His signature beer was called "Death by Hops", an imperial IPA. On the first sip I was like, "Wow, I don't want to drink anything else. Ever."Some people - not me! - argue that South African beer is traditionally not great either. But things have changed. What do you think is behind the beer boom we've experienced locally in the past few years?It has a lot to do with market culture. People have recently wanted to know more about where their food comes from, and so it makes sense that they want to know where their beer comes from too. Obviously it took people to be producing the beer first, but markets like the Old Biscuit Mill in Cape Town gave brewers an outlet and an audience of people who they knew would be interested in finding out more about their beers. I mean, there have been microbreweries in operation for decades - Boston, Mitchell's, and so on - but until recently it hasn't really been, you know, hip. That had a lot to do with &Union and Jack Black and Darling Brewery, who made it look hip to drink beer in the late 2000s and early 2010s.story_article_left1South Africa has more than 100 microbrews now, and counting. Surely it's an unsustainable bubble? Some breweries have started to close.Only a couple have closed, and most of them have been recycled into other new breweries. But I think there will be a cull of bandwagon-jumpers. People generally don't make money from beer and without a passion for it, you'll fall off. Also, South Africa has a consumer ceiling that countries like the US don't have. I can't imagine craft beer being 20% of the beer market like it is in the States, unless the price goes down. So maybe there will be a dip. But craft beer is here to stay.With that in mind, how is your second beer book, 'Beer Safari', different from 'African Brew'?This one is more about journeys. In one sense, it's for people who want to plan visits to breweries. But it's also about the development of breweries, their business journeys. It's educational - teaching people about beer, how to taste it and different styles - but also inspirational. There are no tasting notes in this one. Some of these breweries have 15 beers, and if I did them all it would just be pages of notes. It would be a Platter guide, and really boring to write and equally boring to read. Especially because there are a lot of lagers: Oh, it's crisp and refreshing.And your own writing journey?I started the book in August 2014 and finished in January 2015 - and I wrote a Lonely Planet book in that time too, so I was busy. The business of putting the book together - beer, beer, interview, travel, travel, beer, interview, travel, travel - is always a challenge. You know what they say: "Write drunk; edit sober". The sobriety bit is hard. That said, there was only one brutal hangover.Does this book show the way forward for South African craft beer, in beer tourism?Maybe. The problem is that there are no formal beer routes like there are for wine. Also, most breweries aren't visitable, and even most places with taprooms aren't very pretty. I mean, I think those places are super cool, but not everybody would.Maybe it could be more like wine tourism - with spittoons?I can appreciate a spittoon if you need to judge wine or drive afterwards, but I think they're very unclassy. I think it's revolting to spit out a beverage someone has slaved over.And what if you were to slave over your own beers? Which five styles would you have in your lineup?First, definitely, a massively-hopped IPA - I'd push it to 70 IBUs. Then, something really rich, like a Russian Imperial, for wintery evenings. Then a witbier - there aren't very many good ones locally, even though the climate is perfect for it. Then something weird, like a chocolate orange stout. And lastly, my husband's biltong-spice flavoured beer. 'Beer Safari', by Lucy Corne, is published by Struik Lifestyle (R275)...