Review: Steam Whistle Lemon Shandy

Steam Whistle used to pride themselves about being a brewery that produced one product and one product only, their Steam Whistle Pilsner. Now - they have multiple products in their portfolio including a Pale Ale and the Canadian release of New Belgium's Fat Tire Amber Ale. Well, craft breweries have to continue to innovate now days to keep consumers interested, relying on one beer and one beer only could've been feasible a decade ago but now.. people want variety. So, Steam Whistle recently released two new products, one is a Session Lager, while the other is a Lemon Shandy. The Shandy is what I'm going to be sample today, the product seems so new that it's not really even listed on the website yet, but I was able to find out that the beer is a mixture of Steam Whistle's famous Pilsner and lemonade.. well, here's the ingredients listed on the can: water, malted barley, hops, yeast, sugar, filtered water, white grape concentrate (contains sulphites), citric acid, natural flavours, malic acid, sodium benzoate and potassium sorbate (as a preservative). - 2.5% ABV.

That's a lot of ingredients just for a shandy but meh, it is what it is.

Appearance: Clear, golden straw body with a lot of micro carbonation in the body. The head has a light amount of foam on top, mostly a snow white hue to it, some bare spots on top of the beer, but also a little bit of lacing on the glass too.

Aroma: Lemons. Has a sweet lemonade aroma to it, quite sugary, slight tartness. There's a light grassiness from the hops, while the malt gives off a very slight hint of Pilsner - very crisp, light, not at all aggressive.

Taste: Lemon right from the very beginning - tart presence of lemon juice, followed by a good deal of sugar to this beer. The pilsner has a crisp, light graininess that gives off a bit of a saltine cracker vibe to it. The hops are slightly grassy but masked by the lemon for the most part. Mouthfeel is acidic and tart while the aftertaste is predominantly lemon and sugar, it lingers for a good amount of time.

Overall Thoughts: Shandys aren't as popular in Canada as they are in the US - Radlers (with grapefruit juice) seem to be the choice for Canadians. The beer is quite crisp with a good amount of sweetness, lots of lemon, easy to drink, kind of a soda vibe to it. Not bad.