The Brew Guru Tastes Leinie's Fireside Nut Brown, or, Brownie with natural flavor

The Brew Guru isn’t really into beer-food pairings. As long as there’s beer, he’s happy; the food is just gravy. But the general lack of tradition of beer being an integral part of the Thanksgiving meal is mystifying. It’s a feast, right? A celebration of bounty, of plenty, of abundance? So how can you have that without a great beer? Not just the really good beer you have in your fridge 300 days of the year, but a great beer for special occasions – a once-a-year beer. So this year, join The Brew Guru in declaring beer – preferably a fall/winter brew and preferably brewed in Wisconsin – as essential to Thanksgiving as turkey.

This week’s brew: Fireside Nut Brown

Style: Brown ale

Brewed by: Leinenkugel Brewing Co., Chippewa Falls.

Availability: This Leinie has taken over the winter seasonal slot that opened when Creamy Dark moved to year-round production. Officially, it’s only offered in November and December.

Taste: The first sip of Fireside ignited an instant deja vu back to winter 2006 and Miller’s limited-release chocolate lager. That beer was spiked with actual chocolate; here the effect presumably comes from the two-row malt. Caramel, hazelnut and maple notes combine with the chocolate to make this a brownie of a beer, but it’s a complexity that’s somewhat suspicious. As with other new Leinie’s brews the last few years, Fireside bears “Beer with natural flavor” on the label. This is uncommon on beer labels, so either Leinie’s is cheating at brewing or is overly honest. Either way, serve Fireside above typical fridge temperature to let that cornucopia of flavor breathe.

Backwash: The nut brown is probably a bummer of a style to brew: It’s easy to mess up, and even when you nail it, it’s ... still just a nut brown, unobjectionable and interesting but never transcendent the way a great weizen, stout or pale can be. That said, you can hoist worse beers over your gravy-covered plate this Thanksgiving.

2 mugs (out of four)

The Brew Guru tastes Leinie's Summer Shandy, or, Half beer but not half bad

Imagine you are a German innkeeper in the 1920s, the early days of the Weimar Republic. It’s a weekend, and business is steady. Then, around the bend come thousands of touring cyclists, thirsty and and in need of refreshment. Without anywhere near the beer to serve all of them, what’s a body to do? Improvise! Dilute the beer with lemonade, say you created a refreshing new drink just for the occasion, name it after the guests (a radler, German for “cyclist”) and rake in the cash. It’s the legendary – and informative – origin of a cousin of this week’s brew, new from our friends on the other end of Highway 29.

This week’s brew: Leinenkugel’s Summer Shandy

Style: Shandy, a mixture of wheat-based lager and lemonade, although the packaging here is clear that the mixture is “lemonade flavor.”

Brewed by: Jacob Leinenkugel Brewing Co.

Availability: One of four prominently placed seasonals from Leinie’s, the brewery says you’ll find it anywhere Leinie’s is sold. Sales began April 1.

In the glass: By definition, this is a compromised beer. The question, before a taste (or even a sniff), is how much it is diluted. Some ABV math tells us that Summer Shandy is about 85 percent beer (It’s 4.2 percent alcohol by volume, which is 85 percent of the 4.9 percent of Leinie’s other wheat beers.) The senses, however, tell The Brew Guru the beer ratio it could be even lower. The body is paper-thin, the aroma benign and the taste ... what taste? There’s virtually no malt to speak of, and even the lemonade (flavor) lacks the tartness or sweetness that could punch up the brew. It’s a surprising turn from the brewery that last year brought us the breakfast-cereal-style fruit freight train of Sunset Wheat.

Backwash: So Summer Shandy doen’t taste, smell or feel like much, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. This style is what it is, and it’s not made to please beer purists. It’s made for cyclists. For beer-league softball players coming in after a long inning in the outfield. For a fisherwoman getting skunked and sunburned on the bay. And, from the view of the Leinie’s brass, for the large, mostly young market for non-beer beverages in beer-type bottles, like Mike’s Hard Lemonade. For all of these people, the light body and mild taste is not a problem but an asset, which means Leinie’s could have another hit on its hands.

2 mugs (out of four)