Leinenkugels Summer Shandy

Brewed by Leinenkugel Brewing Company (MillerCoors)
Style: Fruit Beer
Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin USA

This is almost like a malternative lemonade. Pours lemonade yellow with a fizzy white head. Nose is lemons, and the might be some light malt in there. Tastes like lemonade, too. Not a lot of distinction here. Are they going after the former Zima drinkers?

Light amber color. Aroma of lemons and indistinct maltiness. Taste is almost precisely like carbonated lemonade (unsurprisingly). Very little malt/beer character comes through (which makes me like it less), although far more drinkable and refreshing than any other Leinenkugel that I have had before. Might be a decent malternative by the pool on a hot day. Even so, it’s a big gimmick and not really a beer.

This beer was one of the worst I have ever sampled. It poured a cloudy straw color with a big white head. The head left some nice lacing around the glass, though. But that’s pretty much where the good attributes of this one leaves off. And that isn’t saying a whole lot. The nose was of lemons and stale barley. The flavors were extremely sour and unpleasant. The lemonade that was advertised on the bottle was overpowering. There wasn’t much else in the flavors that I could taste. It was just lemon and sour and that’s it. And it was awful.

Summer Shandy has some great characteristics especially for the summer. The beer is very refreshing and perfect thirst quencher on a hot day. It is very drinkable and I can enjoy several in one sitting. The sweetness of the lemonade is definitely not overpowering. The aroma is very sweet. There is little to no hops/malt present in the nose.

Pours a cloudy orange-yellow with white head. Looks like a hef. Aroma - strong lemon, fresh clean scent...tough to pick up on anything else, maybe a little grainy malt. Taste is kind of what you’d expect...lemonade flavored beer. The wheat gives it a dry, fresh flavor. Sweet, but not as sweet as I was expecting. Very lightly hopped...just enough to give it a gentle bitterness in the finish. It has a pleasant tartness. Hard to tell you are drinking a beer, but at the same time it’s way superior to hard lemonades. Not nearly as sugary. I hated this at first but it grew on me. A good summer quencher and a brew I will continue to have on hand during the few hot months in MN.

Tastes a bit like pine sol. Pours a cloudy color. Has a very good aroma. Not anything i’d pick up at the store again.

Pours a pale cloudy yellow with a frothy white head leaves very nice lacing for a fruit beer, actually any beer. Aroma of summertime lemonade, sweet and tangy. Lemon flavor throughout, hint of wheat underneath, all slightly watered down. Missing the tangy sweet tartness of true lemonade and the aroma. Nice even carbonation. Quite refreshing, reminds a little of lemon sherbet.

Blehhh. It’s all syrup and carbonation. Fizzy syrup. Go ahead and just drink a good ginger ale or lemonade and you’ll do much better than this.