Finest Beer Selection 2026 with new category

Beer mixes | The Finest Beer Selection is entering its fourth edition. Starting February 2nd, 2026, breweries can register their beers for expert tasting. A new feature is that beer mix drinks can also be registered for sensory testing. Jens Luckart, head of the Doemens Savour Academy, explains the background in an interview.

In 2026, Finest Beer Selection (FBS) will also include beer-based mixed drinks. What is the idea behind this?

Jens Luckart: The Finest Beer Selection views beer as a work of beverage art. In art, there are different styles and techniques. Even a beer mix drink can be critically tasted and evaluated sensorily. The variety of mixed beer drinks on the market is increasing. This is precisely where the challenge lay for us: to clearly structure this variety for our participating breweries and for the tasters on site. A classic Bavarian lemon shandy and a cola wheat beer are two different approaches to the topic and should be considered just as differently as a pilsner or a stout.

Do beer mix drinks not “dilute” the “evaluative character” of beer?

Luckart: In the case of a sour shandy, perhaps, if you take the question too literally. But if you take the sour shandy as an example, a good master brewer has the finished product in mind and can tailor the beer to be mixed to the mixing partner. Calibrating the sweet-to-sour ratio, masking any transient bitterness and calculating the influence of colour make the development of character more complex than one might think at first glance.

How is the category of beer mix drinks (“Beer mixery”) defined in the Finest Beer Selection?

Luckart: It is a mixture of beer and non-alcoholic soft drink. So, if there is any alcohol, it always comes from the beer. If the beer is non-alcoholic, then the result is a non-alcoholic beer mix drink. The biggest difference in terms of taste is certainly the proportion of soft drink, and there are some very creative approaches on the market here, alongside classic lemon, we have seen raspberry, apple, cola, energy, grapefruit, passion fruit...!

There is a wide range of beer-based mixed drinks in terms of flavours/tastes and alcohol content – how is this diversity covered by the FBS?

Luckart: A distinction is made based on the main flavour of the soft drink, whether the base beer is alcoholic or non-alcoholic, and the type of fermentation (top or bottom fermentation). Next to the classic lemon shandy (in Bavaria and Austria, we say “Radler”), this results in many possible combinations and mixtures.

We evaluate the variety depending on whether the base beer is a non-alcoholic beer or a beer with alcohol. With beer, a further distinction is made between whether the base beer is a top-fermented beer or a bottom-fermented beer. This already results in four different possibilities:

• Non-alcoholic bottom-fermented;
• bottom-fermented with alcohol;
• non-alcoholic top-fermented;
• top-fermented with alcohol.

These four variants correspond to the aforementioned aromas and flavours in the soft drinks used (lemon, raspberry, apple, cola, energy, grapefruit, passion fruit, etc.), which can also be described as key aromas. In addition to this wide range of options, the great benefit of the Finest Beer Selection lies in the individual registration, which, in my opinion, is underestimated!

We're already looking forward to tasting it! Thank you very much for this interview.

The interview was conducted by Andreas Hofbauer.