Come and join the roof drinkin club!

"area man" (hurrburgring)
05/03/2015 at 15:09 • Filed to: SRDC

Ive decided to head up to my completely unrefined roof and have a different seasonal beverage every Sunday that’s as gorgeous as this one. I invite you all to join me!

That’s a real invitation if you live nearby btw. Or even if you don’t, that’s cool too. You wanna hop on a plane or drive for six hours just to drink on a hot roof, that’s your prerogative. But even if you don't, you should head outside and have a drink too! Anyway, onto the “beer.” It’s Sam Adams version of a shandy or radler or whatever you want to call lemonade and beer mixed together, which I’m sure some of you find offensive out of principle. I’m generally an obnoxious purist myself, but compromises can be made above 75 degrees Fahrenheit. Lemons in my beer is one of them.

The problem with most commercial shandies is the artificial taste; most veer too sweet to cover up the swill beer base, and the result is something akin to a malty Sprite. One time a bartender in Austria actually poured half a can of Sprite into my beer when I asked for a shandy, but that’s what I get for being a dumb American I suppose. These are absolutely meant to be drunk outside in the sun.

The “golden Helles lager” base of Porch Rocker is decent enough; it’s the first thing you taste, with the lemon washing over your taste buds in short order. It’s not as sweet as some of the others, but the aftertaste definitely took on a chemical quality over the course of the bottle.

Overall I can’t say I’d recommend it. The artificiality comes through too strong, and without the requisite sweetness to balance things out it just tastes a little off.