Perlenbacher Radler / Shandy

Velmi slaby radler. Ziadna vona po citrone. No a ani chut nie je tipicka pre radler. Velmi slaba chut.

50 cl can shared with friends. Clear golden color, small white head. Smell and taste sweetness, sugary, pear. Low body and carbonation. Sweet lemonade, not beer.

Can 500ml (Lidl Pori)
Pale yellow colour, small white head. Aroma is rubber, citrus peel. Light-bodied. Sugar water with light artifical lime flavours. Easy fizzy soda pop. No beer found.

Blik gekocht bij Lidl. Ziet er uit als appelsap. Smaakt als limonade. Volgens de beschrijving een ABV van 2.5 maar dat is in de smaak niet te merken. Dit heeft volgens mij niks met bier te maken.

Radler is said to have originated in early 20th-century Bavaria when a local pub owner did not have enough beer to quench the thirst of passing cycling tourists and mixed it with lemonade - and now, since five-odd years, is a huge hit again in the Netherlands and Belgium, but is firmly rooted in the industrial side of brewing, consisting of industrial pale lager blended with equally industrial lemonade. This German example is no different so I expect the exact same profile as the Radlers made by Belgian and Dutch macro breweries these days. Can from a Lidl supermarket in the southern Netherlands, 50 cl. Moussy, off-white, bubbly but stable head, slowly thinning in the middle; misty warm straw-yellow colour with slightly greenish tinge. Aroma, as indeed with all these industrial Radlers, mostly dominated by the lemonade, even though it seems to constitute half of this concoction; I guess the beer used here, is the blandest of pale lagers imaginable. Smells largely of Fanta Lemon, with a lot of ascorbic acid, a lot of white sugar, artificial lemon juice and lemon aromas, lemon-scented hand soap even, through which glimpses of gypsum, sweetish grains (soggy breakfast cereals) and even something very vaguely damp cloth-like seem to pierce. Very sweet and very fizzy, numbing onset as indeed an industrial soda pop would have, a ton of white sugar on top of very lemonade-like ascorbic acid, with a sweet, completely artificial citrus effect, of lemon extract as well as industrial orange juice; thin body as expected, made ’fuller’ by the sharp carbonation fizzing away on the tongue, but slowly and subtly developing some underlying ’beery’ features, however very remote, with a kind of slick graininess on the sides and back of the tongue - but again, very remotely so. A chalky touch appears in the end as well as a very vague bready-starchy touch (not necessarily ’beery’ though), and all the way at the back, there is a very dim, inexpressive, bland bitter touch which may have to do with additives in the lemonade just as much as with the hop extract used in the beer. Perlenbacher’s standard pale lager buried under industrial lemonade - the first probably in a simplified, cheaper, even more bland form. Fulfils its purpose, but as expected, this is completely industrial and dominated by fizzy, ascorbic and very heavily sugary lemonade, like Fanta or something alike. Enjoyable enough by itself - if you like Fanta, that is, but not beer.

50cl can from Lidl. Pours cloudy pale (Fanta) yellow with a quickly thinning white head. The aroma contains lemon, sugar, soda and some grain and straw. It tastes heavy sweet, very light sour, with a very faint hint of grain bitterness in the finish. Light body, slick/sticky texture, fizzy carbonation, refreshing. Not as revolting to me as others have indicated - it’s just equally industrial as a lemonade.