Tending to your garden or yard is hot, tedious, repetitive work. For just one week this summer, can’t the grass and infernal weeds just stop growing? The answer will always be no. But there’s a silver lining to all those fields of green. Gassing up a lawnmower and giving the grass a haircut is a great excuse to drink a beer, ideally a cold lager. Ideal lawnmower beers are low in alcohol and off the charts in refreshment, ideally consumed ice-cold with a koozie in your hand.
Lawnmower beers shouldn’t demand deep contemplation. They’re a thirst-quenching reward for tackling the drudgery of yard work, brightening moods while whacking weeds. Here’s the dirt on six of our favorite lawnmower beers to crush.
Thirst-Quenching Lawnmower Beers That Make Yard Work Suck Less
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1. Yuengling Light Lager 99
ABV: 4%
This spring, the venerable Pennsylvania lager brewery reformulated the recipe for this lower-calorie riff on its flagship amber lager. The 99-calorie reboot retains most of the rich caramel nuances, while the carb count sits at a svelte three grams of carbs per 12-ounce serving. Light Lager 99 is ideal for downing beneath a beaming sun—and from personal experience it makes a pretty great shower beer to boot.
Devising a low-alcohol light lager with a depth of flavor can be difficult, but Wyoming’s Roadhouse Brewing hits the revitalizing sweet spot of taste and scant calories with Highwayman. Brewmaster Max Shafer deploys a decoction technique, a process that intensifies malt character, in this pilsner packed with refined European noble hops. “I love lager beer,” Shafer says, calling Highwayman a personal drinking “staple.”
The popular Brooklyn brewery is best known for its amply hopped hazy and complex fruited sour ales, but we’re filling our koozies with tall boys of Grimm Lite. The all-American lager matches a minimal alcohol level with maximal flavor, both rounded and refreshing. Our advice: Grab a case and tackle that long-delayed landscaping project.
This year marks the 25th anniversary of Ballast Point, the San Diego brewery that helped spark America’s IPA revolution with the tropical landmark Sculpin. Now owned by Kings & Convicts of Illinois, Ballast Point is once again doubling down on hop-forward innovation with beers such as Wee Gus. The crystal lager drinks like a crisp, 95-calorie lager but it’s crammed with a load of Hallertau Mittelfrüh and Northern Brewer hops that lend a floral, herbal fragrance. Consider Wee Gus a lawnmower beer for IPA fans.
The Richmond brewery makes this hometown lager with a portion of barley and hops grown in Virginia. The clean-drinking unfiltered lager offers pleasant citrusy notes from the Cascade hops, giving it more character than the standard summertime crusher. The packaging is also on point with grandpa-approved stubby glass bottles. Ice a six-pack and stick a stubby in your riding lawnmower’s cup holder.
The craft beer industry can sometimes seem self-serious and overly twee. Deschutes aims to destroy pretension and crank up the fun-loving quotient with Da Shootz!, a playful pilsner that nods to a common mispronunciation of the brewery’s name. The 99-calorie pilsner mixes and matches classic German and modern American hops for a gently lemony scent that’s a perfect aromatic partner to fresh-cut grass.
