At Golding’s, where I work with¹ Dylan of The Bottleneck blog, it’s not uncommon to see us indulging in a little game we call ‘Will It Shandy?’ when we’re trying out new arrivals to the taps. A shandy — that’s a beer mixed with lemonade, on the remote chance the word is unfamiliar to you — is a much-maligned thing, and this upsets us both greatly. They can be truly wonderful, in a few different ways and for a few different reasons. So, starting with the Platonic Ideal of the modern shandy — a simple pale lager and a mass-market lemonade — we sat down to try a few different types of beer and see what twists and nuances we could find; to investigate not just whether we thought something could shandy,² but also to start to test the why. In the name of both Science and Silliness, we recorded our endeavours and you can listen to the result above — or indeed over at Dylan’s. Very many thanks to him for doing all the editing work, and to The Coconut Monkeyrocket for our theme music.³

Generally speaking, beer-blending is an ancient but neglected art. One of the under-appreciated joys of beer-bar bartending is the relatively-bountiful freedom to experiment with such things. Malthouse, with its thirty-odd taps, was ideal for this: I have particularly fond memories of the original West Coast IPA Challenge when I discovered that I massively preferred a 50-50 blend of Epic’s ‘Armageddon’ and Hallertau’s ‘Maximus Humulus Lupulus’ over either beer on its own.⁴ And speaking most-generally, mucking-with-things post-purchase is your sovereign right as a consumer-of-things. There are only a few wrong ways to drink, and they are all circumstantial, regulatory, and/or moral — none of them concern matters of taste. I heartily encourage you to experiment; with shandies, and beyond. Let me know of any serendipities into which you stumble, on your way. They might just work for me, too.

Sidenote: the Beer Diary Podcast isn’t dead. It’s merely resting. Again. Watch this space.

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1. Technically: “for”.
2. To shamelessly verbify the noun— because that’s how language works, damnit.
3. Dylan chose ‘Square Beer’ for this episode / project / thing, quite fittingly. But you might recognise the style and/or the name from the Beer Diary Podcast’s intro and outro — in which case, ten points.
4. It’s turned into its own little tradition within a tradition. You still see people blending various contestant beers (the night now usually showcases a dozen or more) and sharing their findings. After I left the bar to work at Garage Project, I was delighted to hear of the invention of the Angry Zombie; equal parts Garage Project ‘Angry Peaches’ and Epic ‘Hop Zombie’.