This Is My Blood: Harvest Patch Shandy

This beer reminds me of yesterday's Quaker Slut (cherry juice and oatmeal stout), because it too is allegedly a shandy. A shandy is anything with beer and a non-alcoholic liquid mixed together. I know the Quaker Slut is a shandy because I mixed them myself. I know this Leinenkugel is a shandy because... it says so on the label? Which lead me to wonder what the non-alcoholic liquid is. The label claims honey. Does that count? Is it liquid enough to make this a shandy? Or did Leinenkugel affix the word "shandy" to the beer name because it'll help the beer stand out from other pumpkin ales (truth), and also Leinenkugel's whole thing is shandies so why break that trend?

This beer reminds me of Wednesday's Long Ireland Raspberry Wheat, because we had another temperature scare. This time, it wasn't a short-term fuck up like leaving the beer in a hot car. No, this was a long-term fuck up, as we were able to successful ignore upkeep of our refrigerator for almost seven years, until the cooling vent was completely blocked with ice. I spent a good 30 minutes worried that all the beers I literally just bought were going to warm up and taste awful (and, ya know, worried that a fridge was going to break 40 days before selling the house), before figuring out I could just smash the ice with a screwdriver and fix the issue. In the meantime, this Harvest Patch Shandy and the rest of the beer chilled comfortably in a backpack cooler.

This beer reminds me of Tuesday's Shiner Oktoberfest, because I can just picture the look on those beer snobs' faces if this beer showed up at the actual Oktoberfest. Harvest Patch Shandy, with its honey and pumpkin-spice flavors, takes a large diarrhea all over Reinheitsgebot's grave. Only a shitty American brewery could come up with such a perverse Frankenstein of a product. Not that it was bad, but Leinenkugel rarely lets its beer just be beer.

This beer reminds me of Monday's Nightmare on East Elm Street, because, yeah, it's a pumpkin ale, and I was again thinking about the philosophical question of what a "pumpkin beer" actually is. Like, okay, so today's beer was a weiss (wheat) beer, and by adding pumpkin flavors, it became a pumpkin beer. It started as something, but because of some added ingredients, it is now classified as something else. If that's true for all pumpkin beers, then how do we know what a beer started as if the label doesn't tell us? Or can something literally be a pumpkin beer, always a pumpkin beer, never anything else ever? I have a few more beers in a fridge, and maybe one day next week I will try to answer these questions.

This beer reminds me of Sunday's Bilsner, because I used it to wash down some pretty great junk food. This time it was a pepperoni pizza from Lidl, baked to perfection. I was reluctant to pair a pumpkin beer with anything—the pairing just seems weird to me—but I figured that a shandy might be a slightly better fit? I dunno, the pairing was fine. To me, it confirms the theory that any beer goes with any food, and any complaints one might have just sound snobby.

This beer reminds me of Saturday's Coors Light, because they are absolutely two beers that I could picture my mom drinking.

This beer reminds me of last Friday's Pumpkinville Latte, because each beer is at least trying to stand out in the vast sea of generic pumpkin ales that line the shelves this time of year. Not that either of these beers is doing a tremendous job at that—I would argue that the only reason I would every drink either of these specific brands is if I was drinking a new beer every single day for an entire year. Otherwise, they might get a second glance (huh, this one is coffee-flavored too? and this one is a shandy?), but would more than likely get passed over. There are just too many options. I know other times of year feature seasonal brews, but none, it seems, as cutthroat as autumn's onrush of pumpkin beers (and oktoberfests).

This beer reminds me of...

NOTES

BEER: Harvest Patch Shandy

GENRE: Pumpkin Ale (or Fruit and Field Beer, depending on who you ask)

ABV: 4.2%

BREWED BY: Jacob Leinenkugel Brewing Company

LOCATION: Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin

PURCHASED AT: IGA

PAIRED WITH: pepperoni pizza 

GRADE: 3 pukes out of 5

BEER COUNT: 359