Welcome back to FTW’s Beverage of the Week series. Here, we mostly chronicle and review beers, but happily expand that scope to any beverage that pairs well with sports. Yes, even cookie dough whiskey.
Leinenkugel’s sales numbers are surging. Sure, that’s mostly related to the fact the company made its flagship Summer Shandy available year-round. But it’s also because the long-running brewery — under the stewardship of Molson Coors — is continually expanding its tap offerings. That includes bringing back old favorites like Sunset Wheat or trying new things like a chocolate dunkel or, this summer’s latest varietal: Juicy Peach.
Juicy Peach is an effort to jump on two trends at once. Peach is the fruit flavor of 2023, consuming everything from hard tea varieties to an entire Simply Spiked mix pack. Sours are the trendy beer style of … well, probably about five years ago, if we’re being honest.
But the divisive brews have persisted long enough to be accepted, or at least tolerated, across the country. And that’s what Leinenkugel’s needed to hear in order to fill its kettles with fruit and hope the final product doesn’t taste like bile.
This sweet and tart session sour is meant to walk a fine line between the two. A light(ish) beer that intermingles fruit flavor while scraping the surface of a sour beer before being sucked into the acidic depths of the brew. That’s a difficult balance to pull off. Let’s see if Leinenkugel’s is up for the challenge.
Leinenkugel's Juicy Peach: B
Like that smell, the beer itself is juicy up front before breakfast grains and light hops clean up the experience. It tastes more like a shandy than a sour, but it’s got some of the signature tartness that reminds you it’s not a member of Leinenkugel’s widest tap line. It absolutely avoids the trap of being too sour; at no point does it seep into your jaw muscles like some of the stronger offerings in the sour landscape.
That makes it an easy drinking light beer — it clocks in at 4.4 percent ABV, albeit with 158 calories per can. There’s something a little hollow about it. I think I’d like a little bit more malt, but that might just because I’m not huge into sours in the first place.
It’s slightly more sour out of the can, but not in any way that diminishes it. It’s a crushable summer beer whose alcohol content won’t deter you from drinking a bunch … even if the calorie count might.
Would I drink it instead of a Hamm's?
Welcome to a new feature on these reviews; a pass/fail mechanism where I compare whatever I’m drinking to my baseline cheap beer. That’s the standby from the land of sky-blue waters, Hamm’s. So the question to answer is: on a typical day, would I opt for Leinenkugel’s Juicy Peach over a cold can of Hamm’s?
Maybe one or two, but the replay value isn’t that high here. I like it as a change of pace beer, but not something I’d bring a full sixer of to the pool or a cookout.
