Drayman’s Brewery & Distillery

Malted barley on the Highveld

Malted barley sets the work in motion before Moritz Kallmeyer, winemaker at Drayman’s Brewery & Distillery in Silverton, Pretoria, turns it toward whisky, beer, and mampoer. He has owned the house since 1997, long enough for brewing and distilling to become less like separate trades than adjacent stations in the same discipline. The premise is practical: one house, several expressions, each needing to earn its place in the range.

Kallmeyer has spoken plainly about why the operation widened beyond beer. “Being a craft brewer and brewing unique styles of beer didn’t bring in enough money to survive in this business on its own.” He has also named the pressure of working near large-scale brewing: “I think beer didn’t make it on its own being on the front doorstep of one of the biggest major breweries in the world.” That candor matters here. Drayman’s is not built on romance alone. It is a working producer shaped by continuity, constraint, and the decision to keep more than one craft alive under the same roof.

One house for beer, whisky, and mampoer

The method at Drayman’s begins with malted barley and the equipment of a working production floor: copper stills, wooden mash tuns, and stainless steel washbacks. The house works at micro-scale, with approximately 100+ casks of single malt in maturation, a figure that keeps the cellar close to the hand rather than the spreadsheet. Drayman’s Highveld Single Malt Whisky sits beside Drayman’s Solera Whisky, Drayman’s Mampoer, Letzter Wunsch Helles, and Berghof, a range that makes sense only when brewing and distilling are allowed to inform each other.

The Highveld setting gives the whisky its own pressure. This is Pretoria, not a coastal whisky region, and the altitude belongs to the material life of the place: maturation, evaporation, storage, and the daily read of cask and wash. The house does not turn that into a slogan. It puts the stills, mash tuns, washbacks, and casks to work, then lets the range carry the argument.

The still house in Silverton

The room reads as production before hospitality. Industrial surfaces, visible equipment, and the smell of grain keep the tasting close to the bench, whether the glass holds whisky or beer. The noise stays conversational, but the place is not polished into silence. It has the feel of a converted working building because that is what the craft asks of it: space for mash, wash, still, cask, and the movement between them.

That texture gives Drayman’s its useful tension. A visitor can taste, tour, and pair food here, but the stronger impression is of a house still occupied by its own method. The counter sits near the making. The casks are not decorative language. They are the slow account of Drayman’s Highveld Single Malt Whisky.