This Is My Blood: Stiegl Radler Grapefruit

Time to catch up on some beer styles that I didn't write about over the past week or so. I took a break for a few weeks, but we are still trying to fill out the master list of all beer styles, which can be found HERE. I'll first cover two I had while down the shore, and then we'll write about today's radler.

American Porter / Stout
(#77)
Exemplified by Rebirth of the Cool

Goddamn it, how have I not written about Stout (#18) yet? Have I really not had a stout this summer? This list is a fucking mess. I'm sorry.

Anyways, here's an American stout, which is a stout... brewed in America... nah, there are a couple of other differences. As always, the ingredients are different, so if the stout has any hops, then you might be able to tell that this is an American stout. Also, Americans have a tendency to, as Mosher puts it, "color outside the lines a bit." So true with this Rebirth of the Cool. This thing doesn't just have a roasty flavor, it was brewed with real, actual coffee beans. This is to its detriment, I would argue, but you can't deny that this is something that only a crazy American brewer would think to do.

Belgian Pale Ale
(#57)
Exemplified by Crosspath

The malt character says that this beer sits firmly in the Belgian tradition, while the hops betray an affinity for the somewhat newer hop-centric pale ale heritage—this is the best of both worlds, my friends. Created in 1833, this was Belgium's attempt to compete with those pesky pales coming over from Britain. It was a success.

Shandy / Radler
(#80)
Exemplified by Stiegl Radler Grapefruit

Shandies and radlers are mostly "summer refreshers." They have low alcohol content because the beer part of the drink is mixed with a fruit juice or fruit soda. Typically lemon, lime, or grapefruit juices/sodas are used (today's was the latter, grapefruit, which tasted good going down, but burping up it reminded me too much of a paloma, which gave me mad acid reflux last week).

What's the difference between these and a beer cocktail, you might ask? Not much. It comes down to the beer being pasteurized first so that the sugars of the fruit juices aren't fermented while they are both chilling in a can, waiting to be consumed.

Another question: what's the difference between a shandy and a radler? That's something I have to go outside of Tasting Beer for. Apparently there's not much of a difference other than geography. "Radler" means "cyclist" in German. There is a tradition in Germany that radlers are drank after a workout, especially biking. I think I remember reading something about how a bunch of bicyclists overran a bar in Germany one time, so the barkeep mixed the beer he had with fruit soda to cut the alcohol and double the quantity.

"Shandy" is a British term. It's basically any beer that is mixed with any fruit concoction. So a radler can be a shandy, and a shandy I guess could technically be a radler. In my eyes, they are pretty much the same.

NOTES

BEER: Stiegl Radler Grapefruit

STYLE: Radler

ABV: 2.25%

BREWED BY: Stieglbrauerei zu Salzburg GmbH

LOCATION: Salzburg, Austria

PURCHASED AT: Foodery NoLibs

PAIRED WITH: crab cake sandwiches

GRADE: 2.5 pukes out of 5

BEER COUNT: 308