Earlier this month, SAB launched a limited edition eight-pack of beers from across the African continent. Beers For Africa features lagers from Tanzania, Lesotho, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Mozambique and South Africa. The best bit isn’t the beers though – it’s that funds raised from the initiative go to Stop Hunger Now, with a donation from each pack sold buying a wholesome meal for three school students. The goal is to provide a million meals by 2018.
It’s a nice chance to sample a few pan-African beers, although for the beer nerd there’s not too much variety – lager, lager and a bit more lager. Happily, there is also Laurentina Preta, which is a dark lager and definitely the star of the mixed pack (which we didn’t include in the tasting because a} it’s quite obvious what it is and b} I’d already drunk it.)
To find which other beers shone and which fell flat, I got a group of five beer lovers together for a blind tasting. They talked about the beers and ranked them on a scale of 1–5:
1: Would return it to the bar and ask for something else
2: Wouldn’t return it but probably wouldn’t finish the pint
3: Would finish a pint then move on to something else
4: Would order a second pint
5: Could drink this all day
The results
One beer stood out as being blander than the rest (some might say that’s no mean feat). This beer is so weak in colour that I initially thought I had poured some into a glass containing water. Some of my favourite comments from the panel included “could drink this all day but what’s the point – I could save some money and just drink water”; “it tastes like sparkling water that’s had a mealie dipped in it” and the simple but clear “it’s lame”. Sorry Botswana – St Louis (3.5% ABV) was the resounding loser of the pack. The marketing bumf insists “it is brewed with a special blend of hops” and that it has “full flavour hop association”. I have no idea what that latter statement means, but I can assure you it does not apply to St Louis.
There were a lot of middle-of-the-road beers – Maluti (4.8% ABV, from Lesotho), Kilimanjaro (4.5% ABV, from Tanzania) and Manica (5% ABV, from Mozambique) were all solid 3s: we’d all happily finish the pint – particularly on a fishing trip, after a game drive or watching the sunset on an African beach – but wouldn’t make this a go-to beer unless there was nothing else to drink. (N.B: I got a dud pack with no 2M and two Malutis. If it had been lacking in Laurentina, you’d have been hearing from me, SAB…)
So who came out on top? The second-place beer scored a whopping five from one of our judges and he obviously he likes the taste of home – Castle (5% ABV) was the runner up with an average score of 3.5. And the resounding winner, with 4s across the board was Zambezi (4.7% ABV) – “Zimbabwe’s own lager”. What we liked most was the bitterness – something lacking a little in Manica and certainly the weirdly sweet Kilimanjaro. Interestingly, most of the tasters were convinced that this was Castle – proof that beer geeks appreciate that Castle is a well-made lager.
The Beers for Africa pack is a great gift to take to a braai, and even when you’re forcing down those last few sips of warm St Louis, know that you’re doing it all for a good cause.
