Posted by:
cludgie
(
)
Date: April 11, 2020 04:12PM
Oh, don't get me started!! The Bralima Brewery in Kinshasa, DRC is THE ONLY First World organization in all of the country. a has to remain so in order for the country to produce Heiniken products under license.
Anyway, it's no so much Bralima beers. They're surprisingly high quality, but it is the beer from Lubumbashi, Tembo ("elephant" in Swahili; Lubumbashi is Swahili-speaking) that may be the best beer in all of Africa. I will swear before God and Three Responsible Witnesses that Tembo, an amber lager, is THE BEST BEER IN THE WORLD. Tembo is considered an import because DRC basically has no paved roads, and Tembo has to be flown in on cargo flights. The same company makes Simba ("lion" in Swahili), which, as I recall, is a regular lager. But I've never had it. Why have Simba if you can have a cold Tembo? I was so sad to leave Tembo behind. The closest thing I've found to it is Yuengling, but it's not as good.
Better than the beer is probably Tembo's beautiful collector bottles. Since they re-use bottles, many of the Tembo and Simba bottles still say bottled in Zaire; Zaire hasn't been the name of the country since the early 1990's.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/bikedrool/4029158619/in/photostream/