2015 is up and running and we’re definitely looking forward to it. Last year was an amazing year in the alcohol industry with new products hitting the local market such as the Smirnoff Guarana, Savanna Dry Cider and a host of new whiskies. We covered most of this in our best of 2014 segment and today we chose to look at what we’d like to call Beershara’s 2015 alcohol trends prediction.
So what are some of the things we are looking forward to this year?
Craft beer has been around in Kenya for a while now with the best known breweries being the Big Five Breweries and the Sierra Brasserie. Beer crafting is a relatively new term coined from what was previously known as microbrewing.
The Sierra Brasserie is home to Sierra Premium Beer, which is made up of the Sierra Amber, Sierra Blonde and Sierra Porter brands.
Big Five Breweries produces five kinds of beers named in Swahili after the iconic big five animals. There is “Chui” (leopard) a German-styled kolsch, “Simba” (lion) a pilsner, “Tembo” (elephant) a dark stout, “Kifaru” (rhino) a Belgian-style bock, and “Nyati” (buffalo) an American-style pale ale. The beers vary in strength from 4.8% to 6.5% alcohol.
Last year saw a new entrant into the market, Sirville brewery & Lounge. They serve three beers, namely: Tsavo Lager, Mara Pils and Amboseli Bitter Ale (inspired by the famous National Parks in Kenya). These are all brewed according to the Purity Law (German ReinheitsGebot) which states that beer can only be made from four ingredients, namely: Malt, Hops, Yeast and Water.
We hope we’ll get to see more breweries and craft bars opened around the country in 2015.
Whisky
Last year was an amazing year for whisky lovers with the Love Whisky Festival getting a bigger audience and the introduction of new whisky bottles such as the Talisker Storm and Bulleit Bourbon Whisky. This year we are likely to see more whisky brands getting into the Kenyan market with the whisky market growing tremendously. We hope the 2015 Love Whisky Festival will grow bigger and we’ll get to see a bigger crown at the next whisky picnic.
Keroche Breweries
Keroche Breweries CEO, Mrs Tabitha Karanja, had an amazing year last year as she won the African Bussinesswoman of the year award. In an interview with Larry Madowo, she mentioned that they will be increasing production units for the beer and spirits in 2015 and it will be interesting to see how this affects the market. With consumers becoming more and more conscious, we are on the look out to see how much Keroche Breweries will gain in terms of market share.
These are some of the predictions drawn from what we covered last year and we know industry experts will have more to offer (so drop us a line at tcsmola@gmail.com). There is so much bound to happen in the course of this year and we’ll keep you updated as the year progresses.