Lehe Summer

Once, going to the sauna with some friends, we had no home-brewed stuff to grab to take with us other than some imperial stout and some suspiciously imperial-leaning IPA. In and of themselves, these were not bad beers at all. In my opinion, the stout was very good, actually. Nonetheless, after the hot sauna, the beer, once sipped, just would not go down, and my friends’ glasses remained full for quite a while, with a few glasses untouched after the first tasting.

This painful experience drove home one of the most important insights about brewing: for every beer, there is a particular time and place. By the same token, for every time and place, there should be a particular beer. This is how the search began for a beer that would be a good, light thirst quencher whilst having sufficient flavour and character. You could call this kind of beer ‘sauna beer’ or ‘beer for a hay-making day’. Divers call it ‘deco beer’. It is the kind of beer that is part of the evening after a busy day yet does not require any concentration or effort on your part, instead allowing the sun to set gently on a beautiful day.

The precursors for Lehe’s Summer are Lehe Ale, brewed with Nelson Sauvin hops, and the notorious Tennise Osavus (Skill of Tennis) with the doge picture.