What’s up with Hoptails?
It’s the Aladdin of drinks. He’s a convivial crowd-pleaser, deliciously cheap and accessible to everyone. She’s a sophisticated, colourful yet oh-so-changeable mystery. Together a whole new world: hoptails. What’s up with that?
Hoptails? Let’s break it down:
hop (noun; feminine/masculine)
1 nettle-like plant used in brewing beer
cock·tail (noun; masculine; plural: cocktails)
1 alcoholic mixed drink
2 mixture: fruit cocktail; prawn cocktail
Hoptails: not that new
So we’re talking about beer cocktails here. That may sound like something very hip(hop), but as is often (read: almost always) the case with trends, beer cocktails are not nearly as innovative as we’d like to think.
In fact, the first cocktails—created during the time of the Dutch East India Company, in the seventeenth century—were punches, often based on tea or—as you guessed it—beer. Not so strange, either: beer was a substitute for water. And when spirits made their entrance, people soon discovered that mixing this and that made for even more merriment.
Dark period
For a long time, people experimented to their heart’s content. There was a real cocktail culture, especially in America, England and France. But Prohibition, the economic crisis and the wars of the twentieth century changed all that. The focus shifted to fast, faster, fastest—and preferably cheap, cheaper, cheapest too. So the love of luxury and pure flavours disappeared, and fresh products were replaced with all kinds of packets, tubes and ready-made mixes. The result: the sickly sweet, almost neon-coloured cocktails we know from all-inclusive resorts. It goes without saying that beer disappeared from cocktails too.
Guess who’s back
Since 2000, a turnaround has been underway in food culture. Beer is flourishing like never before. Almost every village has its own brewery, and terms like IPA, Stout and Ale no longer scare us off. Combine that with the cocktail culture growing worldwide and there you have it: the comeback of the hoptail.
Hoptails: how do you make them?
Cocktail queen Tess Posthumus naturally has some tips for that. “In cocktails, we’re used to soda water and champagne, but you can use the carbonation from beer in exactly the same way, and beer also adds extra flavour and structure to the whole. I always taste the beer on its own first. What flavours are in it? From there, I think things through.”
Hoptail with Peroni
“Peroni, for example, is a fresher, citrusy beer that you can take in many directions. A lighter hoptail like this one, for example, is ideal for a barbecue.”
Ingredients:
- 60 ml Peroni Nastro Azzurro
- 45 ml aged genever
- 30 ml fresh lemon juice
- 15 ml grilled pineapple syrup
- Garnish: lemon slice
- Equipment: rocks glass and cocktail shaker
Method
- Pour the aged genever, lemon juice and pineapple syrup into a cocktail shaker.
- Fill the cocktail shaker with ice cubes and shake hard.
- Strain the cocktail into a rocks glass filled with ice cubes.
- Pour in the Peroni and stir briefly.
- Garnish with a lemon slice.
Hoptail with IPA
“But you can also take your hoptail in a completely different direction. IPA works well with a dark rum such as Doorly’s XO or Zacapa 23, for example.”
Ingredients:
- 45 ml dark rum
- 7.5 ml honey syrup
- 7.5 ml ginger syrup
- 15 ml lime juice
- 1 dash Angostura bitters
- 45 ml IPA beer
- Garnish: physalis and a slice of dried orange
- Equipment: highball glass and a cocktail mixer
Method:
- Pour the rum, honey syrup, ginger syrup, lime juice and Angostura bitters into a shaker tin.
- Fill the shaker tin with ice cubes and shake hard.
- Fill a highball glass with ice cubes.
- Strain the cocktail into the glass.
- Top up with the IPA beer and stir briefly so the different flavours combine well.
- Garnish with a physalis and a slice of dried orange.
Photo: What’s Up Punk © Saskia Lelieveld
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