At the height of the Californian summer, my girlfriend, sister, and I ate dinner at a Burmese restaurant in Oakland. The food was fine, but the real highlight of the meal was the small pitcher of "Burmese Cooler" that we shared. The cooler consisted of a light pale ale mixed with lemonade and ginger to create an incredibly crisp, fresh, and dangerously chugable thirst-quencher.
Stiegl's Lemon Radler, brewed by Austria's largest private brewing company (or so it is claimed on the label), was recommended to me by another friend as something comparable to the "Burmese Cooler" that I had described. The Radler is made by mixing equal parts Stiegl Goldbräu Premium Lager and lemon soda in 16.9 ounce bottles that sell for about $4.50. There are apparently two other flavors, raspberry and grapefruit, that are also brewed by Stiegl. The resulting beverage is incredibly light, smooth, and bubbly. The lemon taste is subtle and not really sweet like you might expect a lemon drink (like Sprite) to be. However, the Radler lacks the crispness and refreshing zing that the ginger (and maybe the fresh-squeezed lemonade) added to the "Burmese Cooler." This brew is refreshing at first, but quickly becomes more like drinking a diluted citrus cleaning product as the bottle warms and the carbonation decreases. Ok, maybe it isn't quite that bad, but I'd be very tempted to treat a bottle of this as if it were Gatorade after a triathlon if I drink it again. No need to worry, shotgunning a Radler shouldn't even lead to mild intoxication since it clocks in at a featherweight 2.5% ABV.
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