Coffee and craft beer

Wine understandably dominates the conversation around Cape Town’s drinks scene, but it isn’t the whole story. The city has a genuinely developed independent coffee roasting culture, and craft beer has established a real, if smaller, foothold both in the city and out in the Winelands themselves. Neither needs to compete with a wine-focused itinerary — both slot naturally alongside it.

Coffee	Imported beans, strong local roasting and café culture
Craft beer	A growing scene in the city, extending into Franschhoek
Time needed	A morning for coffee, an afternoon or evening stop for beer
Best for	Rounding out a Winelands or city food day beyond wine alone

Coffee: imported beans, local craft

South Africa’s own climate doesn’t generally suit coffee growing at commercial scale, so the beans behind Cape Town’s coffee scene are imported, typically from elsewhere in Africa and further afield. What’s genuinely local, and genuinely worth seeking out, is the roasting and café culture built around that imported green coffee — independent roasters across the city have developed real expertise, and the resulting café scene is a legitimate strength of Cape Town’s food and drink offering, not an afterthought next to wine.

This African School of Coffee masterclass series is the most direct way to engage with that expertise properly — a hands-on session covering roasting, brewing, and tasting run by people who actually work in the craft, rather than a passive café visit.

If you are new to specialty coffee, a masterclass is also the quickest way to learn a vocabulary you will use for the rest of the trip. Once you can tell what a roaster means by a lighter or darker roast, or why one brewing method suits a particular bean, the menu at any independent café in the City Bowl stops being a wall of unfamiliar words and becomes a set of choices you can make with confidence. It is the same logic as learning a few basics before a wine tasting, which our guide to wine tasting etiquette and costs covers for the vineyard side of the trip.

How to taste coffee properly

Tasting coffee seriously borrows a lot from tasting wine, and that is part of why the two scenes sit comfortably together. Slow down, smell before you sip, and notice how the flavour changes as the cup cools. Ask the barista what they would recommend rather than defaulting to your usual order; in a city with this much roasting expertise, the person behind the counter is usually glad to be asked and often points you to something you would never have chosen yourself.

Try the same coffee prepared two different ways if the café offers it. The difference between a filter brew and an espresso made from the same beans is one of the quickest ways to understand what brewing method actually changes, and it makes a good small experiment for a slow morning.

Craft beer, in the city and beyond

Cape Town’s craft beer scene doesn’t carry the same international reputation as its wine, but it’s a real and growing category with several genuinely well-regarded breweries, both within the city and extending out into the Winelands itself. Franschhoek, best known for wine, is also home to an established craft brewery, which makes it entirely possible to build a Winelands day that includes a beer tasting alongside its wine stops rather than treating the two as separate trips requiring separate visits.

This craft beer tasting covering Spice Route and Franschhoek is a practical way to combine a beer-focused stop with time in the Winelands, useful if a full day of wine tasting alone feels like too much of one thing.

Choosing between a beer tasting and a wine day

If you only have one Winelands day, the honest question is whether the beer stop earns its place. For most visitors the answer is yes, provided it is treated as a change of pace rather than a second main event. Wine tasting rewards concentration; a beer tasting is looser and more conversational, which makes it a good way to reset your palate and your energy in the middle of a long day. If you are still deciding which part of the Winelands suits you, the comparison in Stellenbosch vs Franschhoek will help, and the Franschhoek destination page shows how compact the town is, which is exactly what makes a beer stop so easy to add.

For the bigger picture of how the Winelands fit into a Cape Town trip, Cape Winelands for first-timers sets out the options, and the blog piece on Cape Town versus the Cape Winelands is useful if you are weighing how much time each deserves.

Drinking and getting home

Tastings of any kind mean someone should not be driving afterwards. Plan this before you go, not at the end of the afternoon. A guided tasting with transport solves it neatly, and our guide to the Winelands without driving lists the alternatives. If you are staying in the city, Uber in Cape Town and the broader getting around Cape Town guide cover the evening journey back, and if you do rent a car for the day, car hire in Cape Town is worth reading with this in mind: the designated driver should skip the tasting, or you should book transport instead.

A third option: craft chocolate

Alongside coffee and beer, Cape Town also has a small but genuine craft chocolate scene, working bean-to-bar rather than simply melting and remoulding imported chocolate — a similar story to the city’s coffee roasters in that the raw material is imported but the craft is local.

The Afrikoa bean-to-bar chocolate experience is worth including if you want to round out a day of tastings with something beyond the standard wine-coffee-beer trio, and it pairs naturally with either a coffee or wine-focused itinerary as a change of pace.

Fitting it around a Winelands day

None of this needs to compete with wine for time — a coffee masterclass fits naturally into a morning before heading out to the Winelands, and a craft beer stop works well as a change of pace partway through or at the end of a wine-focused day, particularly in Franschhoek where both wine and beer sit close together.

This essential food and drink tour is a good broader option if you’d rather sample a mix of the city’s food and drink traditions, coffee and beer included, in a single guided outing rather than planning separate themed stops.

The same pairing logic works with a Winelands tasting of sparkling wine. If that appeals, Cape Town and MCC sparkling wine explains the style, and a chocolate tasting before or after it makes a sensible, gentle way to space out a day of sipping.

Building a tasting day around your trip

Coffee, beer and chocolate are easy to treat as filler, but they work best when each has a clear slot. A few shapes that tend to work, using only what is described above:

• A city day. Start with coffee, either a masterclass or a deliberate café stop, then move to the broader food and drink tour in the middle of the day. Keep the evening for a relaxed drink. The one day in Cape Town itinerary shows how to fit a food-focused stop into a short stay without rushing the main sights.
• A Winelands day. Coffee before you leave, wine in the middle, beer at the end in Franschhoek. The Cape Town wine weekend itinerary gives a fuller frame if you have two days to give to the region.
• A food-led day. Combine a market visit with a tasting session. Cape Town food markets and the wider Cape Town food guide will help you decide where lunch fits between the coffee and the beer.

None of these shapes requires an early start or a punishing schedule. The point of a drinks-focused day is to taste slowly, and the plan should leave room for that.

Pairing tastings with proper meals

Tasting sessions are not meals, and it helps to plan food around them. A coffee masterclass is best before lunch, a beer tasting sits well alongside something substantial, and chocolate is best treated as a small indulgence rather than a replacement for eating. For ideas on where to eat, the Cape Town restaurants guide covers the city’s dining, and if you eat vegetarian or vegan, vegetarian and vegan Cape Town will help you plan so that a tasting day does not leave you hungry. If you would rather learn to cook than simply eat, cooking classes in Cape Town are a natural next step after a day of tasting.

Where the coffee culture is strongest

Independent roasters and specialty cafés are concentrated in the City Bowl and surrounding central neighbourhoods, where a genuinely competitive scene has developed over recent years — enough choice that it’s worth treating a coffee stop as a deliberate part of a day’s plan rather than whatever’s nearest when you need caffeine. Quality and attention to brewing method here tend to be considerably higher than a casual hotel or chain coffee shop.

When you pick a café, look for signs that the place cares about what it serves: a short, focused menu, staff who can tell you about the coffee they are pouring, and a roaster’s name on the bag behind the counter. These are small clues, but together they separate a place that treats coffee as a craft from one that simply serves it. Do not be shy about asking where the beans were roasted; it is a normal question in a scene this developed, and the answers often become your shortlist for the next stop.

If you want to take something home, buying a bag from a roaster you enjoyed is a better souvenir than most. Ask how the roaster would recommend brewing it, and keep in mind that fresh coffee is at its best soon after roasting, so buy what you will actually use rather than stocking up. The same applies to chocolate: a bar from a bean-to-bar maker is easy to pack and makes a sincere gift.

Practical notes on timing

Coffee roasters and specialty cafés generally keep daytime hours, making them a natural morning or early-afternoon stop, while craft breweries follow more typical bar and restaurant hours, better suited to a late-afternoon or evening visit. Planning a day around both means treating coffee as a start-of-day activity and beer as an end-of-day one, rather than trying to fit both into the same short window.

Because tastings and guided sessions run to fixed schedules, check the time of any experience you book against the rest of your plan, and leave a margin for getting between stops. A tasting that you reach in a rush is a tasting you enjoy less. If you are travelling in a group, agree in advance who is happy to taste and who would prefer to skip, so that the day does not depend on everyone wanting the same thing at the same moment.

Finally, pace yourself. A coffee tasting involves more caffeine than you might expect, and a beer tasting after a wine stop is a lot of alcohol on top of a lot of sunshine. Drink water between tastings, eat properly, and treat the day as something to savour rather than complete.

Who each experience suits

Not every traveller wants the same thing from a drinks-focused day, and it is worth being honest about that before you book anything.

Curious beginners. If you drink coffee every day but have never thought about where the flavour comes from, the masterclass is the best starting point. It asks nothing of you except attention, and it changes how you order for the rest of the trip.

Couples and friends. A beer tasting in the Winelands is easy to share and easy to enjoy at a relaxed pace. It works well as the lighter half of a day that also includes wine, since nobody has to pretend to have a refined palate to enjoy it.

Food-minded travellers. The broader food and drink tour and the bean-to-bar chocolate session suit people who like to understand how things are made. Both give you a story to tell afterwards rather than just a list of places you have been.

Travellers short on time. If you only have a day or two, you do not need a dedicated session for each drink. Choose one guided experience, add a deliberate café stop, and let the rest of your time go to the main sights. Quality matters more than quantity here.

Families and mixed groups. Coffee and chocolate are the easier fits when not everyone drinks alcohol. A beer tasting is better saved for the adults, and the other experiences give everyone something to do on the same day.

Evenings, and what to do next

Craft beer follows bar and restaurant hours, so it fits naturally into an evening. If you want to see how a beer fits into a night out, the Cape Town nightlife piece is the place to start. If you prefer to browse local products and snacks rather than sit down for a tasting, shopping and markets in Cape Town gives you more places to wander between stops.

A final practical thought: book the guided experiences first, since they have fixed times, and build the café stops and the casual drinks around them. That way the structured parts of the day are secure and the flexible parts can absorb delays, a long lunch or a change of mind. It also means that if the weather or your energy changes, you can drop an optional café visit without losing the tasting you travelled for.

For the wider picture of how long to give the city and where drinks fit, the Cape Town trip planning guide is a good companion to this page.