Beer in your cocktail

Not immediately warming to the idea of a cocktail with beer? We get it. You’re probably thinking more of those watery shandies from back in the day than of a classy cocktail. That bad reputation is a shame, because the beer cocktail is the perfect drink for your party.

You might not think it, but beer cocktails go way back. The English drink Purl, a mix of beer and the bitter, psychoactive wormwood herb, was the predecessor to the beer cocktail. Around 1700, this drink was very popular among English workers. More than a century later, they swapped the wormwood for gin, sugar and ginger. The first beer cocktail, although of course nobody thought of it that way at the time. This drink consequently lost popularity when English beer started tasting better.

Ingenious beer cocktails

With a few exceptions, beer-based cocktails haven’t been doing very well in terms of popularity since then. Or rather, that used to be the case. Inspired by the revival of craft beers and microbreweries, bartenders are increasingly taking them and running with them.

Our Instagram feed, for example, is regularly filled with the most ingenious beer cocktails from Door 74, and previously you could visit the Amsterdam Craft Beer festival for the ‘Dutch Old Fashioned X Bitterblond’: a mix of the barrel-aged whisky cocktail from Stad&Vat – containing Dutch whisky, bourbon, bitters and sugar syrup – and Bitterblond from Brouwerij De Prael.

Mr. Wallace

It therefore wouldn’t surprise us if the beer cocktail became a regular at many cafés, restaurants and, of course, festivals. But anyway: it’s summer now, so we want beer cocktails now. That means making them yourself or visiting a place where you can get them. In Amsterdam, that includes Door 74 , brunch favorite Gs or Smokin’ Barrels on Beukenplein in Oost. Once there, go for the Mr. Wallace: a cocktail with Brooklyn Lager, Jamaican rum and orange-cinnamon sorbet.

Or, of course, you can start bartending yourself. The FavorFlav editorial team selected three beer cocktails that are not only delicious, but also incredibly easy to make:

Michelada: the Mexican equivalent of a Bloody Mary, but with beer instead of vodka. It also almost always contains lime juice, tomato juice, hot sauce (try it with sriracha for an extra umami kick) and Worcestershire sauce. You can find the recipe at Food52. At Gs in Amsterdam, you can drink a version with Warsteiner.

Picon Bière:

“While some beer drinkers wonder anxiously where the world is heading if even their beer is no longer safe from fancy additions, the bittersweet Picon Bière still goes down effortlessly with the hoppy barley brew in the estaminets (pubs) just above and below the Ch’tis border,” says FavorFlav’s Marjan Ippel. Read more for the recipe.

Black Velvet: in many, many cases, mixing champagne is a shame. The Black Velvet is a truly strange exception to the rule, though. You mix the champagne with Guinness or another Stout beer. Seriously, give it a try.

Also read:

• This is enough to make your jaw drop: elite wine club turns out to be a hotbed of sexual misconduct
• LIFEHACK: how to make your wine glass ALWAYS fit in the dishwasher
• Deliciously decadent: eating fruits de mer at a vineyard (near Amsterdam!)

Image: Porch Drinking, Daniel Krieger, Food52, Drinksology