Radler or Alsterwasser
News News blog
Radler (translates into "cyclist") is a mixed beer drink consisting of beer and lemonade. In northern Germany, this mixture is usually called Alsterwasser (translates into "water of the river Alster"), or Alster for short, named after the ostensible colour of the Hamburg river of the same name. In English the appropriate term for this beer mix would be "shandy".
However, the use of the term Alster is not uniform outside northern Germany. Sometimes Alster is understood to mean a mix with lemonade, while Radler is understood to mean a mix with orange lemonade. Sometimes both terms are used synonymously.
In the Ruhr area, too, a distinction is sometimes made between Radler (colourless lemonade) and Alsterwasser (orange lemonade) according to the type of lemonade used.
The term Radler is now also used for mixed beer drinks in non-German-speaking European countries.
According to a widespread story, Franz Xaver Kugler invented the Radler around 1922 when he was in danger of running out of beer in the Kugler Alm due to the large number of visitors (many of them cyclists). According to other sources, the name Radler already existed around 1900.
