REVIEW 113: LEINENKUGEL'S SUMMER SHANDY

COUNTRY OF ORIGIN:  USA

BREWERY:  Jacob Leinenkugel Brewing Company

STYLE:  Shandy; Fruit/Vegetable Beer

ABV:  4.2%

PURCHASE:  Draft (pint), $4.50

SERVING:  Chilled pint glass. Head from the tap only about half an inch. Not much retention either.

APPEARANCE:  Hazy golden-orange body with a fizzy white head. No visible bubbling action and no lacing around the glass.

BOUQUET:  Smells more like lemonade than beer, as you'd expect, but malt notes can be found as well. Not much else. In fact, when held really close, it has an aroma more like lemon pastries than a lemonade or lemon-flavored beverage of any kind.

PALATE:  Somewhat heavy for a brew with an ABV akin to that of a light beer. Soda-like carbonation, but it's still smoother than an expert wax job. Like other shandies, it comes as advertised: A straight-ahead hybrid of lemonade and your everyday macrolager. Lemony entry, lemony mid-palate, lemony finish, lemony aftertaste. Although it's a bit yeasty at the end, too. 

MUSINGS AND METAPHORS:  I'm going to turn off my beer-snob switch for a moment. After all, this is clearly not a beer snob's brew.

On its own merit, then, I honestly can't bash this. Granted, I think it's kind of sad that a brewery's best offering is a fucking shandy. And it's one-dimensional. But it does that dimension decently, so I rank it accordingly.




GRADE:  B