I am having one of those weeks where I strike things off my to do list. Specifically my February to do list. Why, just yesterday I replied to not one, but three emails that have been sitting in my inbox for four months. I am feeling very proud of myself and am riding this momentum – hence this review of Darling’s Gluten-Free Lager, Break Free, which I have been meaning to write since the start of the year.

Giving up bread and cake would be tough enough, but if you’re Celiac or have an extreme reaction to gluten (or are just not a big fan of farting), then giving up beer must be just torturous. Beer is generally made with malted barley, which contains gluten. Wheat beers contain higher levels, while adjunct lagers are fairly low in gluten (the only stats I found are here and are repeated on every other website that actually lists parts per million [ppm] amounts of gluten in beer). Luckily, the beer industry is constantly innovating and in recent years there’s been a marked increase – and improvement – in gluten-free beers, at least on other continents.

There’s not much in the way of gluten-free beer in South Africa. In fact, the only other one that I can think of (aside from umqombothi of course) is Boston Breweries’ Gluten-Free Lager (please comment below if you know of any others). Red Sky used to produce Goshawk, a pale ale that featured gluten-free grains, but they’ve been out of business for a while now. There are two ways to make a beer without gluten – or at least with levels low enough to be labelled gluten-free. You either brew with gluten-free grains, or you brew a standard beer then use an enzyme to reduce (but not entirely remove) the gluten. Both Boston and Darling take the latter approach. A product can be labelled gluten-free in South Africa if it contains less than 20ppm of gluten (20mg per kg).

So – what does Darling’s gluten-free lager taste like? Let me tell you a story. A few months ago I sat down to do a blind lager tasting with a few of my nerdier beer friends. Each person brought along two beers and handed them over to the pourer – no-one else knew what anyone had brought along. I happened to have a four-pack of Darling’s Break Free in the fridge, so brought a couple of bottles to see how it would fare in a line-up of regular lagers, with a panel of people that didn’t know there was a gluten-free beer in the mix. It fared well, ranking above six other craft and mainstream lagers and scoring a very respectable 34 out of 50.

The judges in this year’s African Beer Cup agreed, awarding the beer 40 points and a silver medal in the International Lager category. This is no easy feat – it is one of the most entered categories in the competition (judges were aware that it was a gluten-free beer). There’s not a huge amount to say about the beer in terms of flavour, since it’s a style that trades on being refreshing, not boasting big flavours. But it offers everything that an international lager should – it is crisp and bitter, refreshing and lightly malty, well balanced, with a dry finish – perhaps a little dryer than is usual for the style. I acknowledge that this is more a series of anecdotes and titbits of information than a review, but I’m still calling it a win and crossing it off my to do list. And if you know a drinker who has cut out beer due to issues with gluten, I’d recommend you gift them a four pack – it’ll probably make their day.

Want to read more lager reviews? Check out this write up of Castle Lite vs Castle Lager vs Castle Double Malt.