The Lavandy

Long Winded Instructions

Hey there shandy fans. Did you ever think you’d see a shandy as a cocktail recipe? Well, now you’ve seen everything.

I do love a nice shandy. For awhile I thought that it was invented by Leinenkugel’s. But it turns out people have been mixing stuff into beer long before them. You might say they’re the Arnold Palmer of the shandy. I’ll tell you this though, every time I see their Summer Shandy show up at the store, I know that summer has officially arrived. And we immediately throw a case into the cart.

Well let’s get to it. This recipe starts as so many do, with a mixing glass. Put your vodka, lemon juice, and lavender simple syrup in there. Shake it with ice. You’ll want to get the mixture nice and cold. As you’ve probably gathered, we’re going to end up putting beer in there. So, you won’t want ice in your presentation glass. And the beer, cold as it might be, would warm if your mixture isn’t icy to begin with.

Now you can strain the drink into your presentation glass. I recommend a rocks glass for this, because it’s about the right size. Too much beer dilutes the lavender and lemon flavors. Too little leaves them too strong. You can fill your rocks glass, now, with wheat beer. You’ll get about 6 ounces in there. However, it’s easy to adjust to your taste. You’ll want to pour fast enough to mix things up, but not so fast as to build up too much head.

Now for the finishing touches. A lemon wheel is nice here. A wedge is more functional, but if you’ve got the balance right, you don’t need the extra juice and the wheel looks prettier.

And finally, if you have some culinary lavender lying around, you can sprinkle some of the flowers on top. This has its benefits and drawbacks. It looks nice and brings some extra lavender flavor. But the real benefit here is the aroma. The drawback is that there’s going to be a bunch of flowers floating on your drink and that might bug you. You pretty much need to be comfortable with drinking the flowers. They’re too small to try and filter with your lips.

So much to think about. I’ll leave you now to mull it over. You have an important decision to make. Good luck to you.