Every once in a while, when I encounter an unusual enough beer, I'll buy it out of morbid curiosity. While I'm in no way an experienced beer judge, I thought I'd share with you a review of my newest acquisition, a .5L bottle of Stiegl Radler. This beer was advertised as a "Beer with Lemon Soda Malt Beverage Speciality." Reading the back label, it says it's 50% lager and 50% lemon soda. Now I've heard of a shandy, but never had the dubious pleasure of trying one, let alone a premixed one such as this.
Nonetheless, I braved a taste. The flavor is dominated by lemon soda. It doesn't clash with the beer taste, just completely overpowers it. The only thing the beer does is mute the sweetness of the soda. This results in a drink that isn't sweet enough for a soda, but way too sweet for a beer. Worst of all, to me, the sweetness doesn't even taste like real sugar, more like splenda or sugar substitute. I have no idea if this is the case, as the ingredients weren't printed on the label.
The aftertaste wasn't as bad as I'd feared. A bit malty, with a hint of lemon at the end.
I would not drink this again, especially not .5L of it. I do think I'd like to try the lager by itself, from what I could get, it doesn't seem bad.
It's an interesting concept, maybe one I'll try and replicate this summer - hopefully with better success than they have.
The lager in that, if I remember correctly, is Stiegl Goldbrau.
ReplyDeleteAnd this technically isn't beer in my opinion. When I stayed in Salzburg (hometown of Stiegl Brauerei)earlier this year for 10 weeks, nobody ever considered this beer. It's a radler. Strictly radler. And totally an Austrian thing, by the way. Basically a shandy. The limonade one that you had was 1/2 beer, 1/2 limonade. Limonade is not Lemonade. Think sprite, but austrian. I've also had Kaiser Radler, and I prefered Kaiser's. They use a different limonade called Almdudler. You can find it in some american stores that import a lot of foreign foods.
They also have them in grapefruit. Those were my favorite. Try having one while walking along the Salzach river down a bike path in the warm summer sun. They are so awesome and semi thirst quenching (until it hits you that you need to drink some water after you've downed 2 radlers and feeling a tad dehydrated). Basically, these are supposed to be sugary sweet drinks, not hoppy or malty flavored beers.
You've never had a Leinies Summer Shandy? Good stuff. My wife is addicted. This summer I will try to replicate it. Summer Shandy is a 4.2% ABV, 13.4 IBU half-beer half-lemonade. I'll make it by brewing 5 gallons of 8.4 ABV, 26.8 IBU light hefeweizen, which I'll then mix with 5 gallons lemonade and some campden tablets, (to stop the yeast from eating the lemonade sugar). Keg and serve! Wish me luck.
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