Your new favorite summer drink
I like all kinds of refreshing summer drinks. I love a homemade iced tea, sweet and lemony on the porch in the sun. I can't get enough of the soft punch of mint julep just as the sun gets low. Ask me for my Indian ginger-cucumber-lemon cooler recipe sometime; it's fantastic. I love homemade lemonade, agua de jamaica (a Mexican sweet drink made with hibiscus flowers), root beer floats, and filling our kegerator with light, crisp lagers instead of winter ales.
This summer I'm planning to add two new drinks to my list: clara con limón and tinto de verano, two drinks Fiona and I discovered during our recent trip to Spain. They're very easy, refreshing and delicious, but first you have to get over the seeming blasphemy of mixing beer and wine with soda.
Both of these drinks are based around lemon soda; in Spain they often use Lemon Fanta, but better yet is when they use a sparkling lemonade made with real lemon juice (such as my favorite Spanish brand Kas). In the US, you can find many options at gourmet/nature grocery stores, but a good standby is San Pellegrino Limonata.
These drinks are simple to make: for a clara con limón (also known as cerveza con limón), fill a glass half-full of a cold, light lager-style beer (such as any decent pilsner). Then top off with lemon soda. To make a tinto de verano, pour a red Spanish wine over ice (nothing fancy; everyday tinto will do just fine) and add lemon soda to taste. For both drinks I recommend starting with equal parts soda and beer or wine and then adjusting to how you like it.
I'll be drinking plenty of these this summer; they're the perfect way to beat the heat and dream of further travels to sunny Spain. Next time you bike by, be sure to stop in and I'll make you one too!
(Photo courtesy Fiona)
can we in America even GET lemon soda? i had it in Japan (CC Lemon), but give me a hint as to what is lemon soda here in the dumbass states. Not Sprite, right?
Not sprite! But you can definitely get it; just look for anything with real lemon juice. San Pellegrino Limonata is good, but I also found plenty of options at Whole Foods, Trader Joe's and the like. Sometimes you'll find it in cans, but more likely at stores like that will be 750 ml or 1 liter bottles. At HoFo they call it "Italian soda" or something. And I haven't looked carefully yet, but I bet Hanson's has something, you know?
Or, hell, just make sparkling lemonade. Fresh lemon juice, sugar (superfine will dissolve better, or make a simple syrup first), and sparkling (soda) water to taste. Yum! (More info on superfine sugar here: http://www.orange-bicycle.com/archives/2004/07/delicious_summe.html )
Ah, and the best consistent price seems to be Trader Joes. Their Limonata six-pack is $3, and all the 1-liter bottles I am finding are at least $2, and when you do the math the six-pack, surprisingly, wins on the per-unit price.
Can anyone tell me what the trick is to accents in MT? When I try to use an accent, it gives me one of those strings of symbol characters. I didn't paste it in from Word or anything; it does that even if I type the accented letter directly into the MT box.
Freddy, did I just hear you say that in order to make a cerveza con limon you should use a "decent pilsner?" Are you forgetting what was in your keg when we introduced our friends to this amazing drink? Busch. Busch beer, people. And its still effing great. So forgo any pursuit of decency when picking the perfect pilsner; go for cheap. Though perhaps one had better stay away from lite beer.
Oh, and same goes for the wine. Tinto de verano was developed as a way to use the crappy red wines that you wouldn't want to drink by themselves. So, eventhough I can't deny that a nice wine might taste nicer, this is the perfect use for the 2 buck chuck that you can't palate anymore.
I mean, not MGD; I don't mean that you have to have some imported thing. In my house we consider Busch to be the best cheap beer. Josh did the internet research, and it far and away beat the other cheap beers. You think I'm kidding, but I'm not.
I heart Busch!!!!
I always thought it was the best and glad to know the research now proves it.
Freddy, unfortunately, you have to use the hmtl for accents and some other puncuation.
You can find the html here: http://www.starr.net/is/type/htmlcodes.html
Thanks!
As of 1999, Slate Magazine found Bush to be the best beer per dollar. Not the best beer, period, but the best value.
http://slate.msn.com/id/33771/
do you think limonata tastes different in a can than it does in a bottle?
btw, i really like your wallpaper. it's very cool.
These remind me of a French drink I heard of called a panaché, which is half beer and half lemonade (according to Delacorta.) Now I have to go try one...