With the ban of alcohol sales still in place, South Africans continue to brew pineapple beer.
This is not something new – last year many people brewed their own alcohol after liquor was banned for a couple of weeks. Pineapple, sorghum and yeast prices shot up, as did ginger.
On Sunday, President Cyril Ramaphosa announced that alert level 4 of the lockdown (which we are currently in) will be extended by a further two weeks.
That means, among other things, alcohol sales and on-site consumption of alcohol are still banned, driving people to continue brewing their own alcohol and sending pineapple prices sky rocketing.
According to Cape Town blog, Cape Town Etc, pineapple prices increased by a whopping 74% at R7,32 per kilogram, week-on-week.
Managing director of Agrimark Trends, Johnny van de Merwe, said pineapple prices increased significantly. According to Van de Merwe, this increase is credited to the alcohol bans, in his weekly update on fruit and vegetable prices, reported the food blog.
COO of Grow Fresh Produce, Deon van Zyl told Business Insider that if the alcohol prohibition continues, prices will likely remain elevated or even rise further.
Why pineapples?
Pineapples are South Africa’s go-to brewing input of choice as yeast: the main ingredient involved in alcoholic fermentation, lives naturally on pineapple skins.
The interaction between the yeast and pineapple pulp can result in a relatively potent buzz.
Last year saw many people resorting to brewing their own alcohol after liquor was banned for a couple of weeks.
Google reported in May last year, that South Africa’s number of searches for home-made alcohol recipes spiked.
Searches included “how to make alcohol at home”, “how to make beer easy”, “how to make pineapple beer”, “does pineapple beer make you drunk” and “how to extract alcohol from hand sanitiser”.
We are likely to see the same trend this year.