Newbie American living in West Africa

I just joined homebrewtalk and am looking forward to brewing my first batch of honey wine and banana beer starting tonight. I have 'How to Brew' and 'The Complete Joy of Homebrewing', and am inheriting a friend's brew equipment after the summer.

At the moment, I'm using old-school empty water and wine bottles, corks and other easily-available equipment, so I figure it can only get better from here!

I love beer and, since we can't buy or find good beers here, the best solution is to make them, I figure. My favorites are wheat beer, ales, tripels and Kolshe.

Welcome! What brings you to Senegal?

I run a consulting company here with my husband and we develop and implement development projects around innovations, education and health. Senegal has amazing cereals and Slow Food is really big here, so I'm hoping to get a grain mill and start to brew with grains I can buy locally here (along with the bananas that are so plentiful).

We'll see how it goes. I'm super grateful that this forum exists, as once I read my brewing books I know I'll need some guidance.

Welcome! That's awesome...didn't know about the good cereals/slow food there. Any good local beer/breweries?

I was in Dakar a few years ago, really cool placed; loved it. We stayed by the Phare des Mamelles, just west of Ouakum.

There was a great local brewery next door in Gambia -- Julbrew -- that did great lagers, dark ales and a malty, over-proof boch. There was a masterbrewer there, but he's since moved on. Local lagers are dull, heavy and include corn in their ingredients, which I find leads towards the over-sweet. Very much looking forward to a DIY homebrew set-up of my own!

@TyTanium: I know the Phare des Mamelles. Small world! That part of town is really cool and I like Ouakam as well. Small world! There are some great palm wine places around the Corniche that I've been exploring that have fresh homebrew. You can get a 1.5 L water bottle of palm wine 'to go' for $3 -- and it tastes refreshing. At least, until it gets warm...

endlesssummer said:

@TyTanium: I know the Phare des Mamelles. Small world! That part of town is really cool and I like Ouakam as well. Small world! There are some great palm wine places around the Corniche that I've been exploring that have fresh homebrew. You can get a 1.5 L water bottle of palm wine 'to go' for $3 -- and it tastes refreshing. At least, until it gets warm...

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Small world indeed! I'd love to get back there someday. Do you know the Duttweilers? They're Americans who we were visiting at the Phare. Fantastic people - definitely recommend trying to connect with them; they've been there for 20+ years.

world gets smaller: i lived for 6 months in dakar in 1998, a few blocks away from the presidential palace. i remember hearing that the main beer (green bottle, called "Flag" if i remember correctly - maybe not) used different ingredients depending on what was cheapest - so batches could have varying amounts of corn, rice, casava. made for some amounts of variability.

there were also muslim shop owners who not only didn't sell beer, but wouldn't tell me where i could find any.