Beer, fruit soda combos gain fans

The Washington Post/GORAN KOSANOVIC Radlers can be rad for summer sippers seeking lighter, sunnier beers.
The Washington Post/GORAN KOSANOVIC Radlers can be rad for summer sippers seeking lighter, sunnier beers.

The radler is designed for summertime imbibing: Half beer, half fruit soda and all refreshment, with a bright fruit taste and less alcohol.

The creation of the radler is usually ascribed to a Bavarian innkeeper in 1922, who found himself confronted by hordes of thirsty cyclists looking for some midride refreshment. He mixed his dwindling supplies of lager with lemon soda, and a new drink called the "radlermass" was born. ("Radler" is German for "cyclist," while "mass" is the Bavarian term for a liter of beer.)

The idea of cutting beer with nonalcoholic drinks predates the early 20th century: The English were mixing ale and ginger beer to make "Shandygaff" in the mid-19th century, though the term "shandy" has devolved to stand for any mix of beer and soda. And in 21st-century America, beer drinkers are rediscovering shandies and radlers, two terms often used interchangeably, thanks to craft breweries and European imports.

This year, Colorado's Great Divide and Maryland's Flying Dog released radlers as their summer seasonals, joining offerings from Boulevard, Victory, Narragansett and Leinenkugel, among others, and a growing number of canned German and Austrian radlers found on beer store shelves.

Bitburger, one of the biggest breweries in Germany, spent more than a year working on its radler recipe -- a 50-50 split between Bitburger Pils, the top-selling draft beer in Germany, and lemonade -- before it debuted in test markets last fall. A full-scale American release followed this year, timed to warm weather. Tobias Lehmen, the American brand manager for Bitburger Braugruppe, says that "it was always clear that the brewery would go with the traditional lemon radler to give our consumers the most authentic German experience," instead of a grapefruit version. "The grapefruit radler segment seems a little saturated at this point."

Some brewers are taking it a step further and making sodas just to mix into their beer. Boulevard, which introduced Ginger Lemon Radler in 2014 and unveiled a Cranberry-Orange variant last fall, spent extensive time blending flavor combinations into the Kansas City brewery's popular Unfiltered Wheat Beer, a process that ambassador brewer Jeremy Danner calls "sort of a controlled trial and error." The result: A de-aerated ginger-lemon soda is blended into the beer between fermentation and packaging, creating a crisp and refreshing -- there's that word again -- beverage that's just 4.1 percent alcohol by volume.

"I think that beer fans have embraced [the style] because radler or shandy offers something quite different [from] any other style," Danner says. "Sure, well-made pilseners can be crazy delightful on a hot day, but it's fun to drink beer that doesn't necessarily taste like beer."

The newest craft radlers veer away from a beer-and-soda mix. Flying Dog's Summer Rental is brewed with grapefruit peel and natural pomegranate, period. "We do not do a beer/soda blend like a traditional German radler," says senior director of communications Erin Weston. "It's 100 percent beer, brewed to mimic that flavor profile."

When Great Divide was developing Roadie Grapefruit Radler, which hit shelves in April, owner Brian Dunn says brewers experimented with a blend of beer and grapefruit soda. Brewers hit on a recipe using "lots and lots" of grapefruit puree, which provides bright citrus aromas.

During a tasting of shandys and radlers at The Washington Post, colleagues and I unanimously gave top ratings to Bitburger Lemon and to Stiegl Grapefruit, an Austrian radler that's 40 percent lager, 60 percent grapefruit soda, and 2 percent alcohol by volume. Fizzy and effervescent as fountain drinks, their carbonation made them more refreshing, almost like a San Pellegrino soda, and underlined the bright fruit flavors.

The American craft beers, on the other hand, had noticeably less carbonation, like a "normal" beer, and their fruit flavors seemed soft and tentative, especially given the humidity the day we were tasting. Boulevard Ginger-Lemon and Great Divide's "bitter grapefruit soda" did much better than Flying Dog or Victory's light Cage Radler. The best we could say about Narragansett's Del's Shandy, which smelled vaguely of lemon furniture polish, was that it would be easy to crush after a round of golf or mowing the lawn.

Style on 08/01/2017

Upcoming Events