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Beer Menu: Pick One Abita Amber Abita Purple Haze Abita Turbo Dog Alaskan Amber Anchor Liberty Ale Anchor Steam Anheuser World Select Aventinus Dunkel Weizenbock Bass Ale Beamish Irish Stout Beck's Oktoberfest Bitburger Boddington's Pub Ale Breckenridge Avalanche Ale Breckenridge Oatmeal Stout Brooklyn Pilsner B to the E Bud Light Budweiser Caffrey's Irish Ale Carta Blanca Coors Light Corona Extra DeGroen's Dunkles DeGroen's Weizen Dos Equis Fat Tire Amber Ale Flying Dog Doggie Style Pale Ale Fuller's 1845 Ale Grant's Lazy Days Guinness Stout Hard Core Hard Cider Harp Lager Heineken Special Dark Hoegaarden Imperial JW Dundee's Honey Brown Killian's Irish Red La Fin du Monde Michelob Winter Sampler Pack Michelob Ultra Modelo Especial Moretti La Rossa Murphy's Irish Red Negra Modelo New Amsterdam Black & Tan North Coast Old No. 38 Ommegang Otter Creek Copper Ale Pabst Blue Ribbon Paulaner Oktoberfest Marzen Paulaner Salvator Doppelbock Penn Dark Lager Penn Pilsner Pete's Wicked Oktoberfest Pete's Wicked Strawberry Blonde Pete's Wicked Summer Brew Pete's Wicked Winter Brew Pilsner-Urquell Presidente Pyramid IPA Rolling Rock Samuel Adams Cherry Wheat Samuel Adams Cream Stout Samuel Adams Octoberfest Samuel Adams Pale Ale Samuel Adams Spring Ale Samuel Adams Summer Ale Samuel Adams Weiss Beer Samuel Adams Winter Classics Sapporo Shiner Bock Shiner Summer Stock Shiner Winter Ale Sierra Nevada Celebration Ale Sierra Nevada Pale Ale Singha Spaten Oktoberfest St. Arnold Christmas Ale St. Arnold Spring Bock Superior Tecate Tequiza Trippel Belgian Style Ale Woodchuck Granny Smith Cider Young's Oatmeal Stout Young's Old Nick Barleywine Ale Yuengling Summer Stock Main Beer Page The Top Six Pack: All Beers Listed By Rank Beer Terminology [an error occurred while processing this directive]  Rate & Post A Comment Below. Shiner Summer Stock Makes Texas Summers Positively Liveable! By Belly Buddy Mark Stevens At a Glance: Beer: Shiner Summer Stock Pros: Soft, gentle pale beer with a fascinatingly complex light flavor Cons: I don't con my friends... The Bottom Line: You don't see a lot of Kolsch style beers. Too bad! Shiner Summer Stock proves that mainstream American brewers can do a great job with the style! Temperatures are on their way up. No way to beat Mother Nature. The best we can do is to enjoy the warm weather while we've got it. For me, I'll be pushing the barleywines and imperial stouts to the back of the beer fridge and loading it up with more weizens and some lighter styles of beer -- like the soft, subtle, gentle flavors of Koelsch. I've had some excellent kolsch beers at brewpubs around the country, and here in Texas, one of the surest signs of summer is finding the refreshing flavor of Shiner Summer Stock in every town in the Lone Star State. I'm not usually a light beer kind of guy, but I really do like tilting back a couple cool Summer Stocks on a warm summer evening. I think most folks would... What I Expect to Find in a Kolsch... Germany might be known as the land of lager beers, but at least in the western border region near Koln (I'll use the English equivalent "Cologne" here since I'm too lazy to figure out how to get a real umlaut). Koelsch style ales are light, very drinkable pale beers that are often called "ales", although the truth is that they are really closer to a hybrid between ales and lagers since the Germans generally cold-condition the beers -- even if they are fermented like ales. The result is an amazingly drinkable beer that looks and feels like ubiquitous pale lagers, but that has a light fruitiness, a little zip, and a dash of spritz. It's a beer that's just made for sitting out on the porch on a warm sunny day, watching the world go by. In Germany, the beers are all malt beers brewed using pilsner malt (and sometimes a small amount of malted wheat), noble hop varieties (often Hallertau), and fermented using a distinctive ale yeast strain. Unlike typical English, Belgian, or American ale brewing practices, the German kolsch brewer will, after fermentation, treat the beer more like a lager than an ale. Temperatures will be slowly dropped on the tanks and the beer allowed to mature at near-freezing temperatures. This cold conditioning reduces some of the stronger fermentation by-products usually associated with ales and makes the beer taste more delicate and refined. Refreshment in a Glass... I've got a couple of very nice Kolsch glasses that I picked up in Germany. These hold only about 8 ounces, but they are uniquely shaped -- tall with perfectly straight sides. Shiner claims that their Summer Stock is an "authentic" German-style Kolsch, so let's give them the benefit of the doubt and display it like a German brewer would pour a real Kolsch... Appearance: Hmm. Looks like a Miller High Life when I pour it, but with maybe a bigger head than the Miller has. Brilliant clarity and an extremely light yellow color -- probably about a 3 on the SRM scale. When poured into an appropriate and perfectly cleaned glass, this is the kind of beer that makes a guy understand just why it is that pilsner beers became so wildly popular. Lovely...just lovely. Aroma: My first whiff, fresh out of the bottle, has more of a corn edge than I expected. I wonder if our friends at Shiner are using corn as an adjunct in this beer. More likely, it is the suggestion of dimethyl sulfide (DMS), especially if Shiner is really brewing this beer in the tradition of the small breweries of Cologne, where some sulfur signatures are common. It's definitely not enough to put me off, and it dissipates right away, so I doubt it would offend most casual drinkers. The predominant impression I get from this beer is one of soft sweet malt. There's a little bit of caramel in there along with a very slight pear ester. Even though this beer is light on the aromatics, I like the generally complex way that a lot of things seem to be going on at once. Flavor: Soft and gentle with a sweet clean maltiness. It tastes of fresh pale malt with just the slightest hint of softly, barely toasted sweet bread. The beer is extremely well balanced. It is sweet, but there is an unmistakable lightly pepper-like hop edge as I swallow. This is such a soft, delicate beer that there is absolutely no room for flavor flaws to hide, and while I get the slightest tick of metallic twang on the tip of my tongue, I almost think it's from the water character more than anything else, and I like the way it brings yet a little more subtle complexity to what is already a very fine beer. The body is very light -- every bit as light and poundable as an ordinary American lager beer. I don't know what the real specs are on this beer, but I would lay down money that the gravity can't be any higher than about 11 degrees Plato. What does that mean in real people jargon? Well, it means that if you like throwing back a six pack when Miller Time rolls around, you could easily switch the Miller for this beer and be in for no surprise other than a little more flavor than you're used to. Verdict: My friends at the Spoetzl Brewery never fail to astound me and confound me. Just when I'm ready to pass by their brews in favor of something a little bigger, bolder, and more distinctive, they go and do something like putting out their Shiner Summer Stock -- a beer that I can't help but like. Believe me, I am no fan of pale poundable light innocuous lagers, and what I fully expected to find in this bottle was a beer that was a pedestrian pale lager, like any of a hundred big brands. I thought I was going to get a kolsch in name only. Nope. The guys at Spoetzl figured out what a lot of beer geeks know: a good kolsch can appeal to a mass market just as well as an adjunct laden light lager, yet it can pack an amazing complexity into a soft gentle, subtle flavor profile. If there is a difference between Shiner Summer Stock and a genuine Koelsch from Cologne, it would be that Shiner lets the malt shine through more brightly than do the German masters, who favor an even lighter, softer flavor in their beers than this. For my American tastes, I prefer the Shiner even when I know it might not be considered a "perfect" rendition in an international brewers competition. Catch me out by the pool on Saturday afternoon and I might tell you this is a five star beer. On a Friday during my lunch break though, it's a solid 4-star brew. Good stuff. Refreshing. Maybe I'll call in sick for the afternoon so I can have a couple more...hmmm. Make no mistake. Summer Stock might seem no different from mainstream beers, but to the beer geek who knows and loves the subtle differences that make kolsch not a pale lager, this beer will stand out as one of the finest summer offerings to come from a mainstream (non-craft) brewery. I'm impressed, and you can bet I'll be having another. In fact, I think I better shoot on over to Specs and pick up a case so that I don't run out by the time the true Texas scorcher days get here! Price per six-pack ($US): 6 [an error occurred while processing this directive] [an error occurred while processing this directive] Beer Menu: Pick One Abita Amber Abita Purple Haze Abita Turbo Dog Alaskan Amber Anchor Liberty Ale Anchor Steam Anheuser World Select Aventinus Dunkel Weizenbock Bass Ale Beamish Irish Stout Beck's Oktoberfest Bitburger Boddington's Pub Ale Breckenridge Avalanche Ale Breckenridge Oatmeal Stout Brooklyn Pilsner B to the E Bud Light Budweiser Caffrey's Irish Ale Carta Blanca Coors Light Corona Extra DeGroen's Dunkles DeGroen's Weizen Dos Equis Fat Tire Amber Ale Flying Dog Doggie Style Pale Ale Fuller's 1845 Ale Grant's Lazy Days Guinness Stout Hard Core Hard Cider Harp Lager Heineken Special Dark Hoegaarden Imperial JW Dundee's Honey Brown Killian's Irish Red La Fin du Monde Michelob Winter Sampler Pack Michelob Ultra Modelo Especial Moretti La Rossa Murphy's Irish Red Negra Modelo New Amsterdam Black & Tan North Coast Old No. 38 Ommegang Otter Creek Copper Ale Pabst Blue Ribbon Paulaner Oktoberfest Marzen Paulaner Salvator Doppelbock Penn Dark Lager Penn Pilsner Pete's Wicked Oktoberfest Pete's Wicked Strawberry Blonde Pete's Wicked Summer Brew Pete's Wicked Winter Brew Pilsner-Urquell Presidente Pyramid IPA Rolling Rock Samuel Adams Cherry Wheat Samuel Adams Cream Stout Samuel Adams Octoberfest Samuel Adams Pale Ale Samuel Adams Spring Ale Samuel Adams Summer Ale Samuel Adams Weiss Beer Samuel Adams Winter Classics Sapporo Shiner Bock Shiner Summer Stock Shiner Winter Ale Sierra Nevada Celebration Ale Sierra Nevada Pale Ale Singha Spaten Oktoberfest St. Arnold Christmas Ale St. Arnold Spring Bock Superior Tecate Tequiza Trippel Belgian Style Ale Woodchuck Granny Smith Cider Young's Oatmeal Stout Young's Old Nick Barleywine Ale Yuengling

July is National Hot Dog Month! Two Six-Packs of Truly American Beers for the 4th of July Summer Brews Guide to Buying, Cleaning and Maintaining Your Grill Our Trip to Ireland (on YouTube)

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