Grahamstown Brewery Pty (Ltd), trading as Makana Meadery was founded in the year 2000 with the primary objective of placing a 20 000 year old South African honey based beverage, iQhilika on the world's shelves. Makana Meadery has its beginnings in a Rhodes University based research project to develop state of the art fermentation technology for producing iQhilika, an African mead. The meadery is housed in a historical Grahamstown landmark on the outskirts of this picturesque educational town in the Eastern Cape of South Africa.