Something rather strange happened in the middle of this year’s Tales of the Cocktail event, held in New Orleans this past July. On day three of the five-day cocktail extravaganza, people were found in a seminar room drinking…beer?
Yes, beer. And I do confess that I was the one who led the assembled bar managers, mixologists and cocktail aficionados astray. The occasion was a seminar on beer cocktails, and the result was, according to the many attendees who hung around to chat afterwards, not only a lot of fun, but also fairly illuminating.
If you are wondering what in Dionysus’ name is a beer cocktail, you’re not alone, as the definition was the first thing I had to set out in my 90-minute class. What it boils down to is using various beers to make mixed drinks in three different formats: blends, single servings with nonbeer additions and more traditionally styled cocktails that use beer as a flavoring ingredient.
Green Devil recipe by Stephen Beaumont 12 ounces strong Belgian or Belgian-style golden ale, chilled 1ounce aromatic gin splash of absinthe or absinthe substitute Swirl the absinthe in an 18-to-22-ounce, tulip-shaped glass to coat the surface, and then shake out the excess. Add gin and top with the golden ale, pouring so that the carbonation escapes and the foam rises to as near the top of the glass as possible.
The first, blends, seems fairly simple and straightforward on the surface, but as I cautioned my sleepy crew—the seminar began at 10:30 a.m., which is almost predawn in cocktail terms—it is vital to have compatibility in the beers meant to be blended. As an example of how this does not work, I pointed to the “Black and Tan” noting that because stout and lager share little in common there will be a clash rather than a melding of flavors. To showcase a successful blend, my crew of exceptional volunteer bartenders poured everyone a Black and Belgian, a delicious and eye-opening mix of oatmeal stout and strong and spicy Belgian Trappist ale.
Moving along to the second variety of beer cocktail, I introduced the drink I call Maggie’s Midnight, which I created for my wife when we were dating. Riffing on an earlier drink in which I found that about 2 ounces of LBV port added richness and depth to a bottle of Imperial stout, I added an ounce of good bourbon to the mix and crafted a long drink of significant complexity and taste. The important issue here is not to overbooze your beer, since considerable experience with overly bourbon-barrel-aged ales has taught me that too much of a good thing can be, simply, too much.
For the kinds of beer cocktail that resemble more typical cocktails, there are more varieties of flavors to be found in beer than ever before in the history of brewing, from fruit beers to strong and chocolaty ales to spicy wheats. Not making use of such an abundance of opportunity struck me as quite odd, especially since bartenders today seem to be throwing everything but the kitchen sink into their cocktails. Use them straight, reduce them on the stove to intensify their flavors or even, as blogger Jamie Boudreau points out, reduce and mix them with neutral spirits and sugar to create your own beer liqueurs. But above all, use them, as I had the previous night in a straight-up cocktail I call the Yorkshire Buffalo, which mixes 4 ounces of Imperial stout with one ounce of good bourbon and a few shakes of aromatic bitters.
We ended the session with a Green Devil and a short Belgian beer-pouring lesson, after which the audience slowly dispersed. Some were seen shaking their heads in bewilderment, but more seemed enthusiastic about the bounty of possibilities with which they had just been presented.
