Jump Brewing

Over those three years, South Africa’s wider craft beer landscape began to settle and find form, and it became obvious that the distribution model Murray wanted for Metal Lane — namely to get into restaurants, bars and bottle shops beyond its immediate locality — would require the support of a taproom. “Your economies of scale don't work so well when you’re a really small brewery, so we needed on-site consumption to support us scaling our production to a size that lent itself to wider distribution,” says Murray. He adds that it also then felt important for drinkers to experience the beer as intended. Once the standard was set, drinkers could go out into the world, armed with knowledge of what a beer should taste like when fresh, refrigerated and served at the correct temperature. 

As it happened, Murray’s business partner didn’t share this vision for wider distribution, and so the two parted company so amicably that Murray still speaks highly of Metal Lane today. Determined to gain experience working with high volume, large-scale distribution Murray joined the team at Devil’s Peak, a Cape Town-based brewery that’s now so prolific one might compare it to Beavertown, or Little Creatures. Back then, however, Devil’s Peak was still pushing to expand its scale and output, which was exactly the kind of environment Murray wanted to be in, and learn from. 

Here’s where things get really interesting. COVID cut Murray’s time at Devil’s Peak short, and plunged South Africa into a 21-day lockdown that prohibited people from leaving their homes, and put a blanket ban on the sale of all alcohol. Breweries were forced to shut up shop and cease production. Being too visible to curb the government mandate, bigger breweries reluctantly obliged, but some microbreweries — rightly or wrongly — kept pedalling beer undercover to avoid financially ruinous closure. Ethical or not, these events had an effect on South Africa’s beer scene. The scarcity of industrial lager saw drinkers of this beer turn to available craft lager alternatives, and microbreweries began pumping out lager to meet the demand. 

The quality and technical ability of the South African craft beer scene skyrocketed at the cost of variety, which is where Murray found the industry towards the end of the pandemic. He missed adventurous, characterful beers that were experimental and unusual, and with South Africa’s craft beer landscape having undergone a perfect storm of changes, he began to think, for the first time, about starting a brewery of his own. 

For one, he says that COVID had pushed alcohol into online spaces, where alcohol producers tended not to sell online before. Accompanying this, small scale distribution networks like Uber Eats, Deliveroo and DoorDash had popped up and become popular, making it easier for drinkers to order beer online, directly from breweries, and have it delivered to their door. Murray looked at all of this and saw it as a way for him to connect with drinkers in the way he’d always wanted to. 

He started Jump Brewing in late 2020 by periodically releasing beers — contract brewed at Devil’s Peak — which he sold online in packs of 12 or 24 only. “When I worked at Metal Lane in the early days, I used to sell a case of beer that bottle shops or liquor stores would split into singles, and then you'd be selling 24 beers to 24 different people,” says Murray. “That was great for broadening your audience but it also made selling volume really difficult.” 

When Murray talks about volume, he’s not aiming for world domination, or even for his beer to be universally loved. Brewing for him is a labour of love, and so he was happy for his beers to just be enjoyed by drinkers who shared his passion for pushing boundaries. As such, he would sell the beer by pre-order, everything brewed would be sold, and because Murray chose to sell exclusively online — curbing distribution costs — he could keep prices as affordable as possible for drinkers. The whole operation was, as he puts it, “lean, neat and tidy”, a setup that made it both easier and harder for Murray to manage remotely when his day job required him to relocate to Amsterdam. 

After that, things slowed down significantly for Jump, never quite going completely dormant, but taking the “scarcity model” to new levels. Murray says that people still get in touch asking for Jump beer, and knowing that demand still exists is both comforting and energising for him. However, without a return to South Africa on the cards for Murray in the foreseeable, it’s hard to know what the future holds for Jump Brewing. Murray says he would like to keep the brand alive in South Africa, where life for Jump Brewing began, but outwith that, he’s unsure whether to target specific markets in and around The Netherlands, or take a more global approach, contract brewing all over the world like Omnipollo or Mikkeller have done before him. For now, Jump Brewing is keeping in touch, and collaborating with the countless fond friends it’s made over years. 

In certain lights, Jump Brewing can look like a one-man band up against the world, but Murray’s infectious positivity, passion, and gratitude that the industry is as open and accepting as it is, makes his seemingly impossible mission feel like an inevitable success.