Kitchen Garden Forum

I was just wondering what allows supermarkets to sell shandy as a non-alcoholic drink. Alcohol (beer, wine, spirits) has to be wholly segregated from soft drinks, yet shandy, which can contain anything from 75% beer to 11% beer in its ingredients, is always kept in the soft drinks section. Is this really alcohol? Does the use of lemonade counteract the alcohol, perhaps?

Most supermarket shandies are just over 10% beer. If the beer is typically 4% alcohol, then the total alcohol content will be 0.1 x 0.04 or 0.4% alcohol - around 30 times weaker than a glass of red wine. You'd probably burst before getting intoxicated!

An alcoholic drink, yes. (Just)
A drink for an alcoholic... probably not

two years ago I bought a huge case of bitter shandy for my allotment shed. Very refreshing on a hot day, but I could never finish a whole can. I got into the habit of emptying the last of it on my marrow (the one I was aiming at the show) and that was the only year I ever won.
Your thread has reminded me to get in another case!

I think 2% is the legal break point for it being an alcoholic drink.

And I think there are low levels of alcohol sometimes in things that fement like fruit juices and also liquers etc, christmas cake and puddings etc, white wine vinegar maybe I bet the list is fairly endless but would welcome other's views.

Thanks for the feedback. I am a non-drinker, but was attacked remorselessly by my two teenage daughters the other day who insisted that I shouldn't drink shandy, because it is alcohol! Thank goodness it isn't. Rare it is these days to get one over on the offspring! They are much too clever by half -usually!!

According to my friends it's a girly-man drink.

That didn't stop my girly-man from drinking it all night, bless him. He had to put up with me on my first night out drinking after two years of trying to get pregnant, being pregnant or breast-feeding.

Bet he wished he had drunk something alcoholic to take the edge off. Strangely enough he insisted he had a hangover the next morning when Nugget woke at 7.30am.

beware pub shandy though as it is usually half beer half lemonade. A friend lost his licence because he assumed shandy in the pub was the same as shandy from the shop!