The Brewmaster And The World's Largest Pig Farm

Nigeria had a newspaper that was the equivalent of The National Enquirer, and one week it ran a sensational headline: “I SMOKE, I DRINK, I EAT PORK”.

The newspaper interviewed a popular female singer who is Muslim, and she shocked the country by publically admitting that she breaks three Muslim taboos: cigarettes, alcohol, and pig meat.

I lived in Kano, deep in the heart of the Muslim section of Nigeria.  Kano was the site of the largest pig farm in the world.  It puzzled me why a huge pig farm would be located where most of the people never eat pork.  Then I realized: the pig farm did not have to worry about livestock disappearing.  It only hired Muslims and no Muslim employee would ever sneak a pig out of the farm to take home.  The pigs were shipped 450 miles by railroad to be slaughtered and processed in the Christian section of Nigeria.

So, when a beer brewery was built in Kano, there was a similar logic: hire Muslim employees because they would not sneak bottles of beer out of the brewery. 

The new brewery used the same advertising approach as American breweries: drink our beer and attractive females will flock to you.  This new beer was named Double Crown, and the gimmick was that if you drink Double Crown beer, attractive female twins will flock to you.  “Double your pleasure with Double Crown Beer”.

The brewery hired a brewmaster named Dieter from Germany.  Dieter noticed that Kano had the largest pig farm in the world and, being German, turned part of the brewery into a small sausage making facility.  This was the only sausage within 450 miles.

When Dieter heard that I gave evening Hausa lessons for foreigners who wanted to learn the local language, he started coming to my lessons.

I was hoping that my friendship with Dieter would pay off some day. 

I was hoping to get invited to the legendary Friday Beer Evaluations at the Double Crown Brewery.  The Evaluations were famous for providing a wonderful spread of food, including sausage, while soliciting judgments about the latest batch of beer.  A select group of brewery employees attended and a handful of outsiders were invited.

I finally got an invitation.  Two friends from California were visiting Kano at the time, and I talked Dieter into three invitations.

That Friday came, and I felt so special.  The Double Crown beer makers wanted to hear my opinions, and they wanted my opinion so much that they would serve me some sausage. 

There were 2 Germans, 5 Nigerians, and us 3 Americans at the Friday Evaluation.  At the start, we were each given three glasses painted black so we could not determine the color of the beer inside them.  The glasses were labeled A, B, C.  Two glasses contained Double Crown and one contained a competitor’s beer.

We tasted, and wrote down which glass held the competitor’s beer.  Then we were given a clear glass of Double Crown from a recent batch and we filled out a questionnaire about that beer.  Then we had some food, and then they announced which black glass held the competitor’s beer.

It was glass B!  All the Germans and all the Nigerians got it right.  All the Americans had gotten it wrong.  I had chosen glass A; my California friends had chosen glass C.  We had humiliated America in the eyes of the beer world.

I am pretty sure it was the last time that Americans were invited to a Beer Evaluation at the Double Crown Brewery.  It was certainly the last time I had sausage in Kano, Nigeria.

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In case you haven't seen it before, here is an 11-minute YouTube video of Doug telling how he came to buy a mud house in Kano -  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jw16p1HQnc8

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NOTE: Doug's best stories have been collected into a book: Puppy Out Of Breath.  Price = $11.  You can purchase a copy at  http://www.puppyoutofbreath.com