{"id":37596,"date":"2017-01-22T18:29:50","date_gmt":"2017-01-22T23:29:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gandgmag.wpengine.com\/?p=37596"},"modified":"2025-08-25T10:40:27","modified_gmt":"2025-08-25T14:40:27","slug":"spike-your-beer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gardenandgun.com\/articles\/spike-your-beer","title":{"rendered":"Spike Your Beer"},"content":{"rendered":"

When John Lee Hooker hollered out for \u201cone Scotch, one bourbon, one beer,\u201d in his 1966 recording of the classic Amos Wilburn song of that name, no one mistook his order for an inventory of what he wanted mixed into a drink. Nowadays, that order might need some clarifying. Beer-based cocktails\u2014drinks that marry beer with spirits, which even otherwise serious people have taken to calling \u201cbeertails\u201d\u2014have been sneaking onto drink menus in an increasing number of bars around the South, thanks to the collision of the craft beer movement and the cocktail revival.<\/p>\n

To some folks, of course, this tastes like sacrilege\u2014to beer purists especially, who tend to abide by the same principle the late gastronome Andr\u00e9 Simon laid down for oysters: \u201cA squeeze of lemon is said to be permissible, but it is the thin end of the edge of heresy.\u201d For others of us, however, the best of these drinks taste strangely but defiantly delicious. \u201cThe new era of beer is all about intense flavors,\u201d says Christian DeBenedetti, author of The Great American Ale Trail<\/em><\/a>, \u201cand in the hands of a good bartender those flavors can add some incredible new dimensions.\u201d<\/p>\n

We shouldn\u2019t pretend this is a new development, though. People have been fortifying, adulterating, and generally messing with beer for as long as beer has been messing with us. Take the boilermaker. This is a shot of whiskey that\u2019s dunked into a pint of beer, and, from my observation, is favored by drinkers flanked by companions slapping the bar while chanting the word chug<\/em>. The new generation of beer-based cocktails shares some DNA with the boilermaker, it\u2019s true, but only in the way that we humans share some DNA with monkeys. These drinks wear pants and do not throw their poo. They\u2019re thoughtful and elegant, and, in the South, where the alliance between a whiskey shot and a bottle of beer is as tight as that between catfish and hush puppies, they make a kind of cockeyed sense.<\/p>\n

For a beertail tour of the South, let\u2019s start in Washington, D.C., and drink our way down. D.C. is the home of Barmini, a \u201ccocktail lab\u201d adjoining mad-scientist chef Jos\u00e9 Andr\u00e9s\u2019s acclaimed restaurant Minibar<\/a>. It\u2019s one of the most avant-garde cocktaileries in the nation, and beer cocktails get their own devoted section on the menu. The Distillers Brew, for instance, pairs dark rum, lime, and ginger syrup with Hefeweizen, while the Mezcaleros Brew blends mezcal and honey syrup with a Belgian tripel beer. Moving southward to Richmond, Virginia, we find, at the beer-centric restaurant Saison<\/a>, rye whiskey and Benedictine meeting pilsner in a drink called the Maid in the Shade. Down at the relative newcomer Warehouse<\/a>, in Charleston, South Carolina, bourbon gets brightened with orange, gingersnap liqueur, and maple syrup before meeting a dark porter from the local Holy City Brewing<\/a>. Then it\u2019s over to Atlanta, the de facto capital of Southern beertails.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s definitely a thing here,\u201d says Nate Shuman, who was head barman at Proof & Provision<\/a><\/strong>, in the basement of the Georgian Terrace Hotel, before moving to Craft Izakaya<\/a> earlier this year. Some of Atlanta\u2019s highlights: the Black and Brown at King + Duke<\/a> (rum, brown ale, lime, Velvet Falernum); the Crop Circle at TAP<\/a> (spiced rum, Drambuie, and Harpoon\u2019s UFO Pumpkin Ale); and Shuman\u2019s own creation for Proof & Provision, the Southern 75.<\/p>

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The drink\u2019s inspiration, as its name alludes, was the classic French 75 cocktail, which is a mixture of gin, lemon, sugar, and champagne. For a Dixiefied update, Shuman swapped bourbon for the gin, an obvious and warming substitution, and then, less obviously, \u201cbeer for the bubbles.\u201d He auditioned Miller High Life for the role (\u201cbecause it\u2019s the champagne of beers\u201d) but found that an IPA from the local SweetWater Brewing Company<\/a> hit the proper note. The addition of beer to the bourbon, he says, \u201cprovides a grainy, earthy, and approachable flavor,\u201d and the hops evoke some of the gin-derived botanical flavors you find in a French 75. What\u2019s most surprising\u2014and charming\u2014about the drink is the subtle way the beer melds with the bourbon; they disappear into one another, yielding a flavor that\u2019s neither beery nor bourbony but also not merely in-between. It\u2019s as though a new element emerges, not unlike the way country music met blues and had a baby named rock \u2019n\u2019 roll. \u201cIt\u2019s an exciting way to play with ingredients,\u201d Shuman says about beer cocktails, \u201cand it feels like a natural progression.\u201d It tastes that way, too.<\/p>\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bartenders are generating buzz with inventive cocktails for the craft brew 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