The beer cocktail has its roots in the vulgar pastime of beer adulteration: putting stuff in beer to make it stronger (like whiskey) or weaker (such as lemonade). Over the last decade or so, however, beer has begun to appear on the cocktail menus of cool establishments. At their best, beer cocktails are sophisticated and delicious. At their worst, they can be deeply weird.
At Acme Fire Cult in Hackney, London, they serve something called a spent grain miso radler, which consists of bourbon mixed with miso syrup and pilsner. It’s a very in-house creation: Chef Daniel Watkins makes his own miso from spent grain – a leftover from the brewing process – supplied, like the Disco Pils used in the cocktail, by the onsite 40FT Brewery. You would be hard-pressed to recreate such a drink at home, but it is a great accompaniment to the restaurant’s homemade ferment and pickle plate.
Most beer cocktails are relatively easy to reproduce in your own kitchen. If the other ingredients are obscure, the beer usually isn’t: unless otherwise specified, stick to lager, pilsner, or a less intense IPA – otherwise the flavour will overpower the cocktail. The beer is always added last, after the other components have been mixed: don’t put it in the cocktail shaker with everything else, or you’ll end up covered in it.
Here is a brief – and thoroughly tested – selection of beer cocktails to try.
The Lagerita
One of the more venerable beer-based cocktails, the Lagerita transforms a margarita into a long drink. To the uninitiated, it may sound like a Frankenstein’s monster of a creation, but on a hot summer afternoon there is nothing better. You will wonder where it has been all your life.
To a cocktail shaker full of ice, add 50ml tequila, 20ml Cointreau and 25ml lime juice. A spoonful or two of agave syrup is optional, but if you’ve got agave syrup you’re probably looking for ways to use it up.
Shake well, strain into a tall glass and add about 100ml of whatever Mexican beer you can find. Stir gently, so it doesn’t lose its fizz. You can also salt the rim of the glass, if you think that’s a good use of your time.
Lager spritz
This drink doesn’t have its own name, just a short list of ingredients. “It is a lager spritz, though,” says Indre Poskaityte, bar manager at Sessions Arts Club in London and the inventor of the cocktail. She developed it to take advantage of the unique flavour of St Raphael Ambre vermouth, which on its own tastes more like a pudding wine than anything you would put in a cocktail.
The spritz starts with a tall glass full of ice, into which goes 35ml of the vermouth, 25ml of Campari and beer. Poskaityte recommends “something not too hoppy” – she uses Asahi – and garnishes the drink with a slice of orange. The beer gives it more body than a normal spritz, but it’s still light enough that you could drink two.
The Promenade
At Caia in Notting Hill, London, the Promenade is the beer cocktail of the moment, and with good reason – it’s frankly amazing. Bartender Richard Hiddleston’s concoction consists of 30ml rose vermouth (Belsazar, for example), 10ml lime sherbet (made from the zest of 4 limes, 150ml lime juice and 300g caster sugar), 20ml vodka, 10ml fresh lime juice, topped up with ordinary lager. Hiddleston’s preference is Corona, even though they don’t serve it in the bar.
Shake the ingredients, minus the beer, with ice and strain into a large coupe glass with a single ice cube in it. Fill the glass the rest of the way with beer.
The Michelada
This is the Mexican beer version of a bloody mary, with no vodka and the tomato juice replaced with beer. Some versions also include tomato juice, but I’m not telling you that recipe out of a duty of care. The version found at liquor.com is more or less definitive, including Worcestershire sauce, Tabasco sauce, cayenne pepper, lime juice and Mexican lager. If you have a preferred hot sauce in the house, it’s probably worth a try.
The Radlerita
A traditional radler is a German form of shandy – a 50:50 mixture of beer and fizzy lemonade – which was originally aimed at the cycling community (radler means cyclist). German radlers are now widely available in cans, pre-mixed to those proportions and only 2.5% alcohol by volume.
This tequila-based cocktail – from the MeatLiquor chain’s stable – calls for Stiegl Radler grapefruit beer. I couldn’t find any of this at my local beer emporium (A Pint of Hops in Acton), but they did have a grapefruit Schofferhofer radler, which certainly did the trick, and there were also the options of lemon and pineapple versions.
No shaking here – this all happens over ice: 50ml tequila blanco, 25ml agave syrup, a squeeze of fresh lime juice, the radler beer to the top and a wedge of grapefruit to garnish. Run a spoon through it to mix. This one is quite sweet, so you might want to adjust the level of agave to taste. Another warning: with the inclusion of tequila, this is no longer a mild summer’s day radler. Avoid cycling after consuming.
The Spagett
This cocktail, if you can call it that, was invented by Reed Cahill of Wet City Brewing in Baltimore, and became a bit of a summer thing in America. Despite the daunting name (it comes from a comedy sketch, not an Italian meal) the drink could not be easier to make, and that’s the whole point; when you serve Spagetts, no one will ever accuse you of trying too hard. It’s basically “an Aperol spritz minus champagne, plus the champagne of beers, Miller High Life”.
As shown in numerous TikTok videos, here’s how you arrive at a Spagett: open the Miller bottle and take a generous swig. Then fill the empty neck of the bottle with Aperol and a squeeze of lemon juice, or even just a pushed-in lemon wedge. Serve in the bottle – do not provide a glass, even if someone asks for one. If the Spagett sounds like a waste of good beer, fear not – Miller High Life is not a good beer. If you can’t source any, just choose something comparably dreadful, and enjoy.
