For Tasting Tuesday, Christian has a beer that wouldn't typically go well with February's weather.
Like much of the country, the Maryland area has been experiencing an odd, but not entirely unwelcome, mild winter. In fact, last week saw an unseasonable 75 degrees.
So when looking through the beer selection, I skipped over the wonderfully seasonal stouts and porters, and reached for the Cranberry Orange Radler from Boulevard Brewing Company
So what's a "radler" beer?
Radlers, better known as shandy (think Leinenkugel's), are actually beers blended with soda. As a result, they're very light, easy-drinking and typically fruity deliciousness. Perfect for warm weather!
The beers used are typically something lighter like a wheat beer or lager, and Boulevard uses an unfiltered wheat beer in this case. It pours a pinkish-orange with good carbonation and a light alcohol content of 4.05% ABV.
As you can imagine, it's full of fruity flavor - mostly blood orange with mild cranberry. There's also a slight sourness to it, along with a little bready wheat beer flavor, but none of the flavors are terribly overpowering.
This one is considered Boulevard's cooler-weather radler, so it should still be available for another month until their lemon radler starts being distributed.
It's definitely one I'd recommend to the casual beer fan, particularly if you like fun cocktails or even sweeter wines. Beer geeks will love this, too - it's just easy drinking tasty fun.
Who's up for trying one?
Cheers!
Christian and Eric
