Mixing it up

Beer as a cocktail ingredient might not sound very appealing, but anyone who has tried a Shandy or a Black Velvet has had one. Nigel Huddleston reports

As if beer wasn’t brilliant enough already, increasing numbers of bars in the United States are using beer as a cocktail ingredient.

If you’re feeling a bit adventurous you can have a Skip & Go Naked, which turns out not to be a bar room game but a mix of lager, lemon juice and gin, with a dash of grenadine. And if that doesn’t tickle your fancy, ask for a Liverpool Kiss – not a peck on the cheek from a retired docker, but Guinness with a dash of cassis.

The Liverpool Kiss is part of the fashion in New York for drinking beers with an added shot of any sort of fruit liqueur – essentially a do-it-yourself fruit beer.

Mixing beer with other drinks is nothing new of course. What are now regarded as oldfashioned drinks such as lager and lime or shandy are essentially rudimentary cocktails.

The Snakebite – a half-and-half mix of lager and cider – is listed in Diffords Guide to Cocktails, the United Kingdom bartenders’ bible of cocktail recipes.

But the fact that only two other drinks containing beer are listed out of more than 2,000 in total underlines the relative lack of acceptance beer has with many upmarket style bars in the UK.

Of the other two that are included, one is the classic Black Velvet, a Guinness- Champagne mix, originally created to mourn the death of Prince Albert in 1861.

Diffords suggests two-and-a-half “shots of Guinness, topped up with Piper-Heidsieck Brut, served in a champagne flute with sprigs of mint as a garnish.” The other drink is the Steel Bottom.....

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By Nigel Huddleston

Section : Beer Trends

Page number : 26