It’s finally warming up in Syracuse, if only for a couple of days, and to celebrate the arrival of spring, I chose a warm-weather favorite this week: a shandy.

Adding lemon flavor to beer creates a familiar summertime taste and also apparently classifies the beer as a shandy. I love anything lemon flavored, so I was excited to tap into The Traveler Beer Co.’s Curious Traveler Shandy.

You may have heard of “summer beers” or “mud buckets,” both of which — at least in my experience — involve some mixture of beer and lemonade (and sometimes vodka). Most of my experiences with shandy-type concoctions have been with Keystone Light and powdered Country Time lemonade, so it was a luxury to try an “actual” shandy.

I hunkered down outside on my porch with an ice-cold bottle of Curious Traveler Shandy and I took a moment of silence to think about how excited I am for the summer. (I’m rolling my eyes, too.)

The first few sips of the shandy reaffirmed my excitement, and I was in such a good mood that it might have been impossible for me to not enjoy the beer.

In contrast to my previous shandy experiences, the Curious Traveler Shandy had a really nice balance of malty beer taste paired with the lemon flavoring. In the past, so much lemonade powder was used to mix up a batch of summer beer that I hardly noticed anything besides the lemon taste.

With the Curious Traveler Shandy, I was able to taste the malt, which was a nice reminder that I was actually drinking a beer. I also picked up on a subtle lime taste. It was hard to distinguish, but I finally was able to pinpoint the flavor in my last couple of sips.

Hopefully my choice of a shandy will align the beer gods with the weather gods and we won’t see snow again until fall. If not, well, I guess I’ll just keep drinking anyway.

Published on April 3, 2014 at 1:00 am

Contact Tom: tsharkey@syr.edu