Beer Cocktails
Whether you find the idea of a beer cocktail exciting and brilliant, or if you haven’t quite jumped on the bandwagon yet, there is no denying that beer cocktails are gaining steam. Scroll through the almost 19,000 photos tagged #beercocktail on Instagram and find a sea of creative concoctions with every type of beer style and liquor you could imagine.
The combination of beer and spirits may seem like the latest trend, but these boozy beverages have actually been around for quite some time. In the 1700s, there is belief that in a newly born America, sailors drank dark beer, like a porter, mixed with nutmeg, rum, and lime juice. A Flip was beer mixed with sugar, rum, and eggs, and it was served hot. We all know the more modern-day classics, many of which are encountered during the college years, including the sake bomb (a shot of sake dropped into a beer), the lunch box (beer mixed with orange juice and a shot of amaretto), and the coronarita or beerita (a mix of a Corona or another light lager with a margarita). Possibly most famous is the poorly named Irish car bomb (a dry stout, which is often a Guinness, mixed with half a shot of Irish whiskey and half a shot of Irish cream liqueur, such as Bailey’s.) But in today’s world, those don’t even make up the tip of the beer-cocktail iceberg.
A collision of craft beverages
The dance between the beer world and the liquor world is very much alive. Brewers turning to spirit artisans for use of barrels that once housed Bourbon, rum, brandy, tequila, and wine is extremely popular. High-alcohol barrel-aged beers are highly sought after with tons of buzz and often are the most expensive. Goose Island’s Bourbon County line, Sam Adam’s Utopias, Founders Brewing’s Kentucky Breakfast Stout, and The Bruery’s Bourbon-barrel aged Black Tuesday are just a handful of the most searched-for brews by beer lovers.
It makes perfect sense that as the craft beer world has exploded and continues to evolve incredibly over the last couple of decades, beer cocktails would follow suit. Drinkers demand a higher quality of craft beer today and are constantly seeking out beers brewed with innovative ingredients, with fresh techniques, and beers that push the limits. Mixing beer with other well-made products can take it to a whole other level.
“The cocktail world, like any other art form, is always looking for the next best thing,” says Jon Yeager, co-author of The Ultimate Guide to Beer Cocktails and Co-Owner of PourTaste, a Nashville-based cocktail menu consulting company he owns with his wife, Lindsay. The two have been studying mixology for years and help develop fresh new cocktail recipes for bars, hotels, restaurants, festivals, and retail stores.
“Beer cocktails are like the equivalent of punk rock. There are no rules,” he says. For him, it’s all about trial and error and embracing the process of experimentation when he is coming up with recipes for a menu and as he and his wife did with the 50 recipes highlighted in his book. While he believes there are truly no set “guidelines” for beer cocktails, the mixologist does feel there are generally two starting points. He also says that while what works and what doesn’t work may often surprise you, there are definitely some styles of beer that work better with certain spirits
and flavors.
Essentially, he says you either start with a cocktail for inspiration that you’ll add beer to, or you let the beer be the star of the show as the base of the drink, making up the majority of the cocktail. “For the novice beer cocktail drinker, start with the kind of drink you would normally make, and simply try to make it effervescent though the beer,” he says.
Even though it’s really to each their own when it comes to making a satisfying cocktail, Yeager finds that lighter beers, such as hefeweizens and other wheat beers, generally work well with sweeter fruit juices. These styles of beer mix well with the bright, acidic flavors found in shaken cocktails, including margaritas. In his recipe for a Frozen Brandy Crusta, for example, he combines a hefeweizen with Cognac (a variety of brandy), curacao (a citrusy liqueur), lemon juice, simple syrup, bitters, and then blends with ice.
Beer cocktails aren’t just for lighter beers, however. Yeager gladly offers ideas for various beer styles. Beers with a dense malt flavor, such as Scotch ales and old-style English ales, work well in stirred cocktails like a Manhattan or an old fashioned. Because stouts and porters generally have a lot of body and texture, Yeager says both styles lend to be great bases. An espresso Stout is mixed with Woodford Reserve Rye, bitters, simple syrup, and orange zest in his Southern Drum cocktail. In another stout cocktail, he mixes the beer with rum, bitters, crème de cassis (a sweet liqueur made with black currants), and orange zest.
He combines a barleywine with cachaça, simple syrup, and lime juice in one recipe, and a pale ale with bitters, simple syrup, lemon juice, and vermouth in another. A smoked beer is added to pineapple, whiskey, simple syrup, and bitters in the Gilded Trophy.
Part of the allure of creating beer cocktails is finding out for yourself what works, and on ocassion, what doesn’t work.
“There are always going to be things you try to put together that don’t work,” he says. A cocktail mixing a banana beer with a ginger liquor was one miss that he recalls.
Latin-Inspired Beer Cocktails
For Max-Antonio Burger, President and Co-Founder at Veza Sur Brewing Co., a Latin-inspired brewery in Miami, the feedback on their beer cocktails has been phenomenal. “There is always an inherent tension between tradition and innovation that pushes the boundaries,” says Burger.
Veza Sur serves a beer cocktail created from staples in Latin America called the Michelada, often made with light beer, lime juice, hot sauce, tomato juice, and spices. But the team wanted to continue to push the limit and create beer cocktails that show beer can be even more than it already is. Besides all that innovation in creating beer cocktails, Burger explains there are the added benefits for him. By serving beer cocktails, they are offering non-beer drinkers something to enjoy with their beer drinking friends as well as helping newcomers explore and find a beer style they like.
The Tremendo Arroz Con Mango starts with a strong ale, one of their highest ABV beers at 10.8%. It’s brewed with mango, ginger, habanero, and rice flakes. The beer is mixed with fresh Florida citrus, a house-made ancho pepper reduction, mango, and rosemary. The Lulo Bird takes their 3.8% ABV sour beer, which starts fruity and sweet and ends with a slight tartness, and mixes it with citrus, sage, pink peppercorn, and dried orange reduction made in-house.
As far as the process of creating the beer cocktail at the brewery, Burger says there is no one exact way, and it’s a very open and creative process. A former cocktail, Special Jimmy’s Colada, was made by simply mixing two of their brews – their Horchata Cream Ale and a Per’ La Coffee Porter, a 5.6% ABV traditional porter cold-infused with a blend of medium and dark roasted Brazilian coffee. When choosing styles and flavors that work well together, he says it all depends on what you’re going for. He’s found that lagers work best for the Micheladas and Cheladas because they carry the spices best and mix well with lime, and sours work great with fruit-forward cocktails.
Burger says that bringing together brewers with mixologists and experienced bartenders is magic. “It energizes the team every time we explore and tinker with new ideas,” he says.
Fruit-Flavored Beer Cocktails
Kerri McGinley, bartender at Kona Brewing Co.’s Koko Marina Pub in Oahu, agrees with Burger’s view that beer cocktails are popular because they are a great way to introduce non-beer drinkers to beer and also because they allow bartenders to get creative and shake up their menu.
It’s a lot of trial and error, explains McGinley. “When crafting the cocktails, I think over which flavors I want coming forward in the drink and which beers would best make that happen,” she says. Usually she opts for a lighter style, such as a lager or golden ale, so it doesn’t overpower the other flavors in the cocktail. However, she says they do make a mean spicy Bloody Mary that’s topped off with Kona’s Blacksand Porter, a full-bodied beer with pronounced bittersweet chocolate.
McGinley has noticed that leaning more towards fruity flavors seems to work best, especially living in a tropical paradise. She avoids cream-based concoctions as she found these have a tendency to curdle.
Texas-Style Beer Cocktails
Owner of Mountain Cowboy Brewing in Frederick, Colorado, Ron Yovich is excited that beer cocktails are becoming more popular. “We believe that it is just another part of the evolution of the craft beer industry and craft beverages in general,” he says.
His team is constantly experimenting with new beer cocktails, inspired by the season, holidays, and events. A fun way they gather inspiration is getting feedback from customers who take advantage of the “Putting The Spurs To It” option, which allows people to add a shot of any spirit to any of their beers. “If it sounds good and the customer likes it, we’ll try it and possibly make it one of our new beer cocktails,” he says.
Their take on an amaretto sour is the Go Where No Mangoes Sour Ale, a 7% ABV kettle sour brewed with fresh mango puree and local hops, mixed with amaretto and grenadine and garnished with maraschino cherries.
The Shot in the Dark mixes a double shot of espresso with the Coffee Milk Stout, a 6.25% ABV beer brewed with 10 pounds (4.5 kg) of their freshly roasted house coffee. The Red Eye Beer is the Plainsman Pilsner, a 5% ABV smooth-drinking Pils, mixed with tomato juice.
Get Adventurous
Beer cocktails are underrated, according to Gregg Buczkowski, Bar Manager at ThirstyBear Brewing Co. in San Francisco. “They can really be the best of both worlds,” he says.
For him, beer cocktails are a logical choice to put on the menu at the brewpub. When creating one, he usually starts with a recipe of a classic cocktail and deconstructs it to work beer in. Although, he explains, that not every beer lends itself well to cocktails. “The beer cocktail slot (in our menu) is always the trickiest to fill,” he says. “The most recent menu, I ended up using my fourth attempt.”
Bitters or juices are the most essential ingredients in beer cocktails, he says. Stouts and IPAs have been the easiest for Buczkowski to work with. “More esoteric beers can be difficult as they don’t often resemble the flavor profile of other liquids,” he explains. “We currently have a strong brown ale that was just clicking with anything.”
Buczkowski has found in his experience that it is more the liquor fans that are reluctant to try a beer cocktail rather than beer drinkers. He says feedback has been positive for beer cocktails. “As a small brewery, we tend to attract more adventurous drinkers,” Buczkowski says.
Jon Yeager echoes the apprehension but from beer drinkers instead of spirit enthusiasts. “Beer lovers can sometimes cringe at the idea of adding something to beer since brewers put so much time into the beer,” he says. Yeager feels that combining a beer with other producers’ well-made ingredients embraces the idea of creativity that brewing is really all about anyway. “By this collaboration, you’re giving the beer a whole new life and really opens up the product to a whole new crowd.”
Adding spirits and other ingredients to a beer can completely transform it and make it into an entirely different drink. Beer can do astounding things for a cocktail. Depending on the beer, it can add bitterness or malty, roasty notes. It can tone down the sweetness to sugary drinks and even add carbonation to a drink. While some beer purists may feel the idea of adding anything to a beer they’ve worked so hard to create is ruining it; consider what you’re adding to it. The same way brewers add herbs, or fruit, or coffee to a beer to take it to its full potential, so is true for cocktails. Adding a spirit from a local purveyor of a finely made whiskey can do the same.
Regardless of excitement or hesitation, beer cocktails aren’t going anywhere, and you don’t have to go to a hip bar or brewery to try your own when you make your own beer. Who has more control when it comes to creating a beer perfect for a cocktail than a homebrewer?
Beer Cocktail Recipes
Recipes from Thirsty Bear Brewing Co.
The method to make all of these cocktails from Thirsty Bear Brewing Co. is to combine all ingredients into shaker with ice, stir, and strain over ice (optional) into your favorite glass.
#17
Ingredients
1.5 oz. (45 mL) Anchor Old Tom Gin
0.5 oz. (15 mL) lemon juice
0.25 oz. (7 mL) simple syrup
2 oz. (59 mL) golden ale
#18
Ingredients
1 oz. (30 mL) Amaro CioCiaro
1 oz. (30 mL) espresso
2 oz. (59 mL) imperial stout
0.5 oz. (15 mL) Xocolatl mole bitters
#22
Ingredients
1 oz. (30 mL) Lunazul tequila
0.75 oz. (22 mL) jalapeño syrup
0.25 oz. (7 mL) grapefruit juice
0.25 oz. (7 mL) lime juice
2 oz. (59 mL) West Coast style IPA
#23
Ingredients
0.25 oz. (7 mL) Tawny port
0.75 oz. (22 mL) grapefruit juice
0.25 oz. agave nectar
2 oz. (59 mL) barleywine
Recipe from Bell’s Brewery
Combine all ingredients into a pint glass and enjoy.
Beermosa
Ingredients
25% sparkling white wine
15% orange juice
60% wheat ale
Garnish with a mint leaf and/or orange wedge.
Recipes from Kona Brewing Co.
The method to make both of these cocktails is to combine all ingredients into shaker with ice, stir, and strain over ice (optional) into your favorite glass.
Strawberry Longboard
Ingredients
1.5 oz. (45 mL) Stoli Strasberi Vodka
0.5 oz. (15 mL) Triple Sec
0.5 oz. (15 mL) orange juice
0.5 oz. (15 mL) pineapple juice
Splash grenadine
1 oz. (30 mL) American lager
Blue-Wave Martini
Ingredients
1 oz. (30 mL) Stoli Blueberi Vodka
0.5 oz. (15 mL) Blue Curacao
0.5 oz. (15 mL) Midori
1 oz. (30 mL) pineapple juice
Fresh lemon squeeze
1 oz. (30 mL) golden ale
Recipe from Mountain Cowboy Brewing
Served in a 10 oz. (295 mL) glass, we add a shot of amaretto and top off the glass with our Go Where No Mangoes Sour Ale with a good head of foam. Then we add a shot of grenadine poured slowly into the foam leaving a red dot on top of the white foam. The grenadine will settle towards the bottom of the glass giving striations of color. Drop in a maraschino cherry and serve.
Amaretto By Morning
Ingredients
1.5 oz. (45 mL) Amaretto liqueur
7 oz. (207 mL) sour ale with mango
1.5 oz. (45 mL) Grenadine
Recipes from Veza Sur Brewing Co.
The method to make both of these cocktails is to build ingredients one by one in a glass, add ice, and then add the beer. Stir to combine all of the ingredients and then add the garnish.
Shoot the Moon
(This recipe gets its name because it uses Veza Sur’s Shoot the Moon Berliner Weisse. If you want to use your homebrew, brew a Berliner weisse with guava that rings in around 3.8% ABV.)
Ingredients
0.75 oz. (22 mL) Campari syrup
0.5 oz. (15 mL) lemon juice
0.25 oz. (7 mL) guava puree
12 oz. (350 mL) Guava Berliner weisse
8 mint leaves (garnish)
Seasonal Michelada with Pickled Sweet Bell Peppers
Ingredients
0.5 oz. (15 mL) Buffalo Mexican hot sauce
0.5 oz. (15 mL) lime juice
0.5 oz. (15 mL) Pickled Bell Pepper Juice
Dash of Tajin classic seasoning
12 oz. (350 mL) Mexican lager
Dehydrated lime wheel (garnish)
Pickled bell pepper (garnish)
