Summertime is ripe for sipping beer from afternoon to after sunset. And while we adore session IPAs, they’re hardly the end-all, be-all to daytime boozing. To provide drinkers with flavorful lower-alcohol options, breweries have embraced the refreshing potential of the shandy, a blend of beer (often a lager or wheat beer) and fruit juice or soda.
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Many credit the drink’s origins to Britain, a drinking land that’s long loved mixed beverages, be it a black and tan (Guinness and Bass) or snakebite (lager and cider). By the 20th century the shandy was a common potable in both Britain and in Germany, where the blend is known as a radler.
No matter the moniker, it’s clear that the beer cocktail is having a moment in America, so much so that even Coors Light and Budweiser’s Shock Top now feature citrus-flavored variants. Though numerous radlers and shandies crowd shelves, few nail that bull’s eye of flavor and refreshment. To find out which ones hit the mark, we put our taste buds to the test. From Austrian lagers doctored with grapefruit to Missouri wheat beers spiked with ginger, here are 10 radlers and shandies to sip all summer.
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