Excuse the dented can. Seems it might be the last one in existence so I had to run with it

I love it when big breweries release something new. Even if it is a play on one of their existing lagers. It can’t be easy bringing out new beers when you work on such a massive scale, and have so very many kilometres of big business red tape to crawl through. Also, it’s not at all bad for my blog stats when they announce a new release. Four of my top 20 most viewed posts of all time deal with SAB beers (Castle Tank Fresh, Castle Double Malt, Newlands Spring and Castle Milk Stout Chocolate).

So when I first heard about the latest limited edition Castle Lager, I knew I wanted to review it. But the first problem was finding some. I suppose they’re not kidding when they say it’s limited! I contacted my usual go-to liquor stores but they said they were waiting for stock. I struck out with SAB directly. And then hubby over-performed a bit by ordering a full case from Takealot (in truth I really only wanted a four-pack, though he valiantly drank 22 of them while I was in Germany last month). 

This limited edition version of Castle Lager was released to drink while watching the 2023 Rugby World Cup. It celebrates the Springboks’ World Cup wins in 1995, 2007 and 2019 by using hops from the three countries that hosted those championships – South Africa, France and Japan. And that’s all the info I have. Google searches bring up almost nothing on the beer and, weirdly, I haven’t received any press releases on the Limited Edition Castle Lager despite being on about seven of SAB’s PR lists.

We decided that the best way to test it out was in a blind taste-off against straight up Castle. So what’s it like? Well, it’s largely like a Castle, would you believe? That said, every person around the table could tell that there was a difference, and most picked out the Limited Edition version as their favourite. It doesn’t have any notable extra hop character in terms of aroma and flavour, but it is marginally more bitter and a little more crisp than the original. For me, that’s a big win.

If you can find some, it’s a nice gimmick to take over to your mate’s house for the next Springboks match. Maybe with some standard Castle so you can do a blind taste-off as a bit of half-time entertainment. It’s currently sold out on Takealot, alas but you should be able to find it in larger branches of Checkers and Pick ‘n’ Pay. I’m told you can get it at Makro, though again I can’t find it online. So if you do find places that stock the beer, please post in the comments. And let us know what you think of it too.