Most radlers are built on a pale lager. That is the conventional choice, and a deliberate one: lemonade is an assertive ingredient, and a clean lager gives it a neutral surface to sit on without anything pushing back.

Guggman Haus has gone a different way. Its radler, on now at 5.2 percent for Oktoberfest, blends lemonade with hefeweizen.

That single substitution changes what ends up in the glass. Hefeweizen yeast is among the most expressive in brewing, producing banana and clove aromatics as a matter of course rather than as a fault. Those compounds do not disappear when lemonade is added to the beer. The brewery's own description puts the lemon out front as the bold flavor, with banana and clove sitting behind it, which is a fair account of what a wheat base contributes.

It is a combination with more logic to it than it first appears. Lemon and banana are not natural adversaries, and the clove end of a weizen yeast has a light spice to it that citrus tends to sharpen rather than fight. The result should be a fuller, rounder drink than a lager radler, which typically goes for crispness and not much else. This would sit well next to something grilled and salty, where the sweetness has a job to do.

The strength is worth noting. Guggman Haus is presenting this as the lighter option on its Oktoberfest list, and relative to that board it is: the brewery's other current releases run from a 5.3 percent pilsner up through a 6.7 percent NEIPA. Measured against the radler category itself, 5.2 percent is full strength. German radlers are often nearer half that, on the logic that the lemonade is doing genuine dilution. This one is a good deal more beer than mixer.

One further note from the brewery: on Saturday, the radler is going into the slushie machine.

The Radler is pouring now as part of the Guggman Haus Oktoberfest celebration.

Editor’s Take

Radler is simply the German word for cyclist, and by the usual telling the drink exists because an innkeeper outside Munich found himself with more cyclists than beer one afternoon and started cutting what he had left with lemonade. Whether that is history or folklore, it has produced a century of people insisting that a beer mixed with soft drink is a legitimate thing to order, and they have been right the entire time.

The hefeweizen base is the move I would not have predicted. A radler normally runs on a pale lager, which is a polite way of saying it runs on something with no opinions, because lemonade is a loud ingredient and most brewers want it left alone. Guggman Haus has instead picked the one German beer style whose yeast throws banana and clove at everything it touches, then put lemonade on top of it and let them argue. Lemon and banana sounds like a mistake for about two seconds, until you remember they share a shelf in every fruit bowl in the country.

Then there is the slushie machine, which is running on Saturday, and which settles the matter. Freezing it concentrates the lemon and mutes the clove, and anything served as a frozen drink gets graded on a far more forgiving curve than anything served in a glass. This is the correct use of an Oktoberfest afternoon.

Source & Editorial

JollyPint independently prepares release articles using information published by breweries through newsletters, websites, and other official public communications. Brewery-supplied descriptions and tasting notes are reported as provided, while editorial context is added by JollyPint.

Radler Uses Hefeweizen as Its Base, So Banana Comes With It

A radler is usually lemonade cut into a pale lager. Guggman Haus has used hefeweizen instead, which means the wheat yeast's banana and clove turn up underneath the lemon. On Saturday it goes in the slushie machine.

Source & Editorial