Yeah, I know this is an Aldi beer, brewed by it’s Storm Brewing Company name, but I was sort of obliged to include it. Why? Well because I recently acquired some shelves to use to store beer that had been sitting in various boxes on the floor in my beer cellar.

About a week or so after reorganising everything, I remembered I’d bought a bottle of Aldi’s Summer Dayze Ale but hadn’t drunk it. So I went looking for it and it took me ages to find it – it was in a plastic crate with other stuff stacked on top. Seeing as how I went to that sort of trouble to find this beer, I felt it should be included here.

Now I’m not like other beer geeks who instantly dismiss beer brands linked with supermarkets – and Aldi is no exception. They import a range of beers called Hopper Whitman which are made for some supermarket chain in the United States. One of those, the Belgian White Ale, is quite nice. I know I’ve bought a six-pack or two of it in my time.

But this Summer Dayze Ale isn’t in that class. In a great example of confused marketing, this beer is either part of the “Artisan Collection” or the “Handcrafted Collection”, depending on which part of the front label you believe.

The flavour is a dead ringer for Monteith’s Summer Ale. So much so that, when I read on the back label that it was brewed in New Zealand, I truly thought they’d bought a few tanks of beer from Monteith’s and just rebadged it. It has the same sweet ginger beer-like aroma and the same sweet flavour created by the combination of ginger and New Zealand honey. It really tastes like a shandy, or a radler.