Want Good Beer? U-gan-da Homebrew

Our blog is called “A Drinking Couple with a Traveling Problem,” because Katie and I have really gotten into beer and we enjoy going out and trying new ones.  We have our favorites, and ones we dislike (IPAs and Pale Ales!), but the search for a new cool brew is always a fun venture.  The craft beer revolution took the U.S. by storm, and because of it, we’ve become a bit of beer snobs…

Unfortunately, the craft beer revolution has not hit Uganda, which can be a huge problem when you want a good beer.  The beer in Uganda is mainly pale lagers like a Budweiser or Rolling Rock.  The biggest ones here are Nile Special (passable), Club (horrible), Bell (even worse), Tusker (from Kenya and ok), and Castle Lite (from South Africa, and pretty disgusting).  There are also some beers made from sorghum, a wheat replacement, called Eagle (the dark one is ok but has a funny taste), one that is pretty decent called Moonberg (the only issue is that you can’t get it very often), and a decent dark beer called Castle Milk Stout (again from South Africa).  The one thing that all of these beers have in common though is that they are ridiculously cheap (say 3,000 shillings which is under $1), and for the most part, they come in half-liter bottles.  So you are drinking not really good beer, but end up drinking a lot of it since it's so cheap.  There is one microbrewery here, called Yasigi, and while they do have a stout, wheat, IPA, amber, and lager, they are all poor imitations of what they should taste like.

A selection of beers you can get here along with a homebrew and a local type of beer which tasted nasty and had dirt and other stuff in it.

To fix our drinking problem, I started to be a homebrewer!  I wasn’t really sure how to start, but luckily the Foreign Service is full of homebrewers, and I was lucky to have a group of them already going in Kampala.  I’ve been to a lot of breweries and done a fair amount of tours, but for some reason still had no idea how beer is made.  The guys who were already here helped walk me through the process and explained how each step works.  From there, I was able to make my first brew, a Coffee Stout, which unfortunately had a funny aftertaste to it (most likely from going through our large crate shipment from home).  I was a little discouraged but figured I’d give it another shot with a Vanilla Bourbon Stout.  A little ambitious for only my second beer, but it actually turned out really well and my homebrewing continued from there!

Rascal with her namesake brew.

To date, I have made 8 beers and have experimented with adding my own little touches to set kits.  The next step that I am moving to shortly is called all grain brewing.  The simple way to homebrew is to use extract, which is basically malt condensed down into a powder or liquid form.  With all grain brewing, you use the actual malt grain and need say 12+ pounds of the grain rather than 3+ pounds of extract.  All grain brewing takes a little longer but is overall cheaper, and some say tastes better than extract.  You also end up with 12+ pounds of spent grain that can be fed to chickens (or other farm animals) or used for cooking recipes like a pizza dough (tastes pretty good actually).

I’ve become comfortable enough with brewing that two of the other brewers and I are going to put on a brewing class for new people coming to Kampala that are interested in brewing.  I plan to keep brewing while I am here in Kampala, and hopefully into Baku, provided they do not have a good selection of beers that we like as well. 

Maple syrup, bacon, and beer, what's not to like?

Beers I Have Brewed

• Learning Experience Stout – Coffee Stout (Had a funny aftertaste)
• Vanilla Bourbon Rascal – Stout with vanilla and bourbon (I named the first beers after the cats around our house)
• Chocolate Oat-Munch – Coffee Stout with Hershey’s chocolate syrup (Taught me that chocolate syrup is not good to use to get a chocolate flavor, and how yeast works.  It tasted ok but the yeast ate the sugars in the syrup and it became over-carbonated.)
• Spaz’s Dunkelweizen – Made this for the big Oktoberfest Wine and Cheese
• Mama’s Harvest – Oktoberfest beer (I used an ale yeast instead of a larger yeast so a faux-Oktoberfest and had it for our big Halloween Wine and Cheese)
• Sticky Pig – Maple Bacon Stout (Quite tasty actually and brewed for the Annual Chizziz and Beer Fest)
• Morning Monkey – Coffee Stout
• Yankee Doodle’s Grand Cru – Belgian Ale
• Poobah – Belgian Chocolate Stout
• Grand Poobah – Belgian Chocolate and Peanut Butter Stout

‘Merica

Katie and I have learned a thing or two about hosting, and decided that we were going to put on our ‘Merica party again this year but only bigger and better!  Last year and this year the Embassy 4^th of July parties were very work oriented and not open to family members.  Between that and so many people heading out of town for the holiday we figured we’d make this our holiday (as well as Halloween of course).

4th of July 2015 style!

This year we got a lot more BBQ, more red-white-and-blue themed items, and of course a gem stoned red-white-and-blue cowboy hat that lit up!  Both years we had about 40 people show up, a fully stocked bar, and a totally trashed house and yard the next morning.  This year we at least didn’t end up at the bars with the Marines until closing time after partying all afternoon.

Everyone in their red-white-and-blue 2016 style!

The 4^th of July ‘Merica party seems to have become a tradition for Katie and me so we will have to see about keeping that up once we arrive in Baku.

Our “Free” Trip to Ishasha

Back in March at the Irish Ball, we won a raffle which included a free night’s stay at one of the Exclusive Camps and Lodges resorts, which are all very nice and very expensive places to stay.  This included Buhoma Lodge in Bwindi (gorillas), Ishasha Wilderness Camp in Queen Elizabeth (tree climbing lions), or Baker’s Lodge in Murchison Falls (giraffe’s).  With no desire to spend the money to see the gorillas again it came down to the 8-hour drive to see tree climbing lions (our third time to Queen Elizabeth National Park) or the 5-hour drive up north to go to Murchison Falls National Park (also making this a third time).  After much debate, we decided on tree climbing lions and made the long journey down.  We only had a small window to take this trip and had to go just a mere 3 days after arriving home from the Seychelles.  This worked out in our favor because there was a Ugandan holiday on Thursday and we get half days on Friday’s so we were able to make a nice long weekend out of it.

Because I will never stay in the bandas there again (remember the ant incident), we had to find a new place to stay in Ishasha for the first night.  This can be a little hard as every place in this area is ridiculously expensive.  Luckily we found a new place called the Enjojo Lodge just outside the park which had the cutest little huts.  Our first evening in the park we found a new bird and hit some of our favorite spots.  On our way back to the hotel we passed a huge herd of elephants grazing close by.  It always amazing how close you can get to them and how quiet they can be.

Bare-faced Go-away-bird.

A herd of elephants by our hotel.

The next morning we grabbed a UWA ranger and they immediately took us to a hyena den.  We lucked out and got to see them walking around on the road.  Sometimes they can be kind of cute, while other times they are kind of ugly.  We continued on and got to see a ton of birds and then found what we came down here for tree climbing lions.  After spending some time with the lions we made our way to the DRC border and had fun listening to and watching the hippos for a while.

Hyena hanging out in the road.

Hyena's!

The lone lioness in the tree.

A mama and its baby heading closer to the DRC.

With the heat of the day approaching, we headed to the Ishasha Wilderness Camp to start our free stay.  While I will say the place was gorgeous, it definitely wasn’t $300 + per person per night nice.  Lunch was quite tasty and we were in for a treat when we got back to the room.  Behind our room (permanent fancy tent) was a river, and just across the river was a group of elephants poking their heads through all the brush.  We enjoyed some afternoon coffee while we got to watch them and loved every minute of it.

Afternoon coffee with our new friend.

With sunset fast approaching we headed back out and went straight to the lions.  This time there was even more than we had seen in the morning.  Having seen just about everything we wanted to see, we decided to stay with the lions in the hope that as the sun began to set they would start to get active.  It took quite a while, but eventually, our plan worked and some of the lion cubs slowly made their way out to play.  Unfortunately, we didn’t get to see the big male, though another car said they saw him move between bushes off in the distance.  With the sun quickly setting we had to get back to the hotel since you cannot be in the park after dark without a guide, but it was definitely worth the wait to see them playing in the grass as we left.

How can you not love that face?

Time to go and play with its siblings.

For all the adorable lion pictures (and the rest of our trip) check out our SmugMug.

The next morning we made a pit stop to see the hyenas again before we headed to the northern part of the park to our favorite place, The Bush Lodge.  We’ve stayed here every time we came to Queen Elizabeth.  It’s right on the river which means at night the hippos come out to visit.  The food is always delicious and from there it’s a quick drive to get into the park.  We decided to try a new area of the park that we learned about the last time we were in Queen Elizabeth.  We were only on the trails for a few minutes when I saw a cool bird and asked Greg to stop.  Since it was on his side of the car he was taking the pictures for me.  Just as we were about to start up again I looked over and hidden in the grass next to us was a lion.  We spent some time with her, but it was hard to get good views so we continued on our way.  Not having much luck, we headed back to the lion in the hopes that as the sun started to go down she’d get more active.  There were other cars around the lion, but one by one they all started to leave until we were the only car left.  With the sun setting fast we decided we too had to call it and started to turn the car around to aim for the exit.  It was then that one of my all-time favorite Ugandan moments happened.  The one female got up and started walking straight for our car.  She stopped a few feet off the front right of the car and just sat down to look at us.  She only stayed a few minutes, but it was magical moments with just us and her.  Once she checked us out enough and the sun was almost completely set, she got up, turned around, and headed back to her friend.  We didn’t get the ultimate picture, but I think we both got so caught up in enjoying the moment that it didn’t matter.  Looking back at all our trips in Uganda, this truly is one of my most favorite memories.

Our magical moment.

Our last morning we headed out for a quick early morning safari before we had to make the long drive back to Kampala.  We got to see some waterbucks fighting, a huge monitor lizard, and some buffalo.  There was a huge herd of buffalo that we had to cross through just before leaving the park.  Usually, the buffalo just ignore you as you drive by, but oddly this time around something seemed different and they were all seriously staring us down.  The child in me started pointing out to Greg the one that was peeing and next thing you know this other buffalo rammed the peeing buffalo with his horns and then they all started chasing our car.  A little scary, but really funny and a great way to end our last safari in Uganda.  Our National Park passes expire the end of July which meant no more free entrances.  Which for Greg was a relief as I think he is officially safaried out.

When buffalo's attack!