Shandy
Beer for daytime
Beer lengthened with fizzy lemon soda — light, crisp, and gently sweet, it stretches a lager into something you can drink all afternoon. Swap the lemon soda for ginger ale and it's a Shandygaff; either keeps it long and easy.
Ingredients
- 6 oz Lager
- 6 oz Lemon-Lime Soda
Method
Fill a collins glass with ice. Add equal parts cold lager and lemon-lime soda. Stir once, gently. Garnish with a lemon wheel.
Documented as beer mixed with ginger beer or lemonade in 19th-century Britain. The OED records the earliest use of "shandygaff" in Cuthbert Bede’s (Edward Bradley’s) comic novel The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green (1853); "shandy" emerges as the shortened form by the late 19th century. Per Merriam-Webster ("An Undiluted History of Shandy"). Notes: modern versions typically use lager and a lemon-lime soda; no single inventor — a folk beer-cooler category.