Castle Lager is a Ballot Spoiler

With the news last week that America’s Budweiser will be the only beer sold in the stands during the 2010 World Cup, SA Blog launched an important poll: which beer is worse, Budweiser (Anheuser-Busch) or Miller (South African Breweries)?

• Cast your vote now at ao1sa-pisspoorbeer@yahoo.com.

But, in considering this question, Your Correspondent didn’t reckon on the discontent of beer-drinknig South Africans – most of whom have never had the displeasure of slugging down either of the aforesaid brews – and who have now demanded that their own beery grievances be heard.

A certain “LA” from Cape Town has proposed South Africa’s Castle Lager – like Miller, another SAB product, and object of our country’s frothiest advertising budget – as worse than the other two, and, indeed, the worst mass-distributed beer ever.

SA Blog isn’t prepared to go quite that far, but a bit of research shows that LA is not alone in that opinion. The brilliant ratebeer.com gives Castle an average score of 2 out of 5, ranks it in the measly 8th percentile in terms of comparative quality with other lagers, and offers accompanying commentary like, “Nothing great, that’s for sure, quite like most American macros… but at twice the cost.”

There certainly are better choices for quenching your thirst in South Africa; for instance, Mitchell’s. Despite the clamor to widen the scope of our poll, however – and, indeed, despite Castle’s worthiness as a participant – we’ll keep the question as is. It’s not fair to ask SAB Miller to take a double trouncing. Send in your wickedness!