Classic Mexican cheladas have inspired

a new wave of beer cocktails, including

this sweet-heat version featuring
mango syrup and chile.

MONIN

NEW Mixologists are shaking up the cocktail scene, using wine
and beer to give new life to mixed drinks
’TAILS to TELL
BY JACK ROBERTIELLO
here doesn’t seem to be much call today in bars
T and restaurants for the rudimentary Red Eye (beer
and tomato juice) or the Wine Cooler (wine with
sparkling water or soda and fruit juice). But there’s
nothing wrong with the idea of mixing other flavors with
beer or wine to create drinks with new taste profiles. In
fact, a small but significant move is afoot to incorporate
the two into contemporary cocktails.
BEER PLAYS WELL WITH OTHERS
“[Beer is] a whole new palette of flavors to work with,” says
Stephen Beaumont, author, with Brian Morin, of “The
Beerbistro Cookbook,” (Key Porter Books, 2009) and creator
of beer cocktails for the Beerbistro in Toronto, Canada.
“Bartenders and mixologists have been playing around with
all sorts of different culinary ingredients, making their own
shrubs and bitters, for instance, and completely ignoring the
fact that we’re living amidst the greatest wealth of beer
flavors and styles that our society has ever seen.”
These flavors work perfectly in cocktail making, he
notes, offering new directions and possibilities for blended
beverages incorporating beer.
And why not? Flavorful blends of beer are as old as
brewing itself. Kriek, a lambic-style Belgian brew, is
fermented with sour cherries; framboise is similarly made
using raspberries. Belgian wit beers are often served with a
lemon wedge to brighten the orange-peel-and-coriander
pop of the brew. Other regional recipes call for adding a
dash of fruit syrup or liqueur to beer.
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BEVERAGE TRENDS
As Beaumont tells it, there are basically three types of
beer-based beverages: those made from a blend of two or
more beers; those served with an added ingredient or two;
and the full-fledged cocktail in which beer is simply
another, albeit important, ingredient.
Stout has always been a good mixer: The Black Velvet,
stout and Champagne, is a well-loved drink; newer
versions mix stout with other regions’ sparkling wines or
with sparkling cider. The Black and Tan, made from stout
or porter and ale, is perhaps one of the best-known of
beer’s two-way blends, and the lowly Shandy comes in
many varieties; most common are those made with ale or
beer and lemonade, ginger beer or even sorrel tea.
But with the vast number of different brews available
today, crafting contemporary beer blends is within reach
of any willing experimenter, and many mixologists use
distinctly flavored craft brews as one of many ingredients
in a modern cocktail concoction.
WINE’S WEALTH OF FLAVORS
The same is true of wine. The average American consumer
can choose from a broader range of varietals, regions,
flavors and wine styles today than at any other time.
“One of the benefits of drinking wine cocktails is that
our reach now is so great,” says A.J. Rathbun, author of
“Wine Cocktails” (The Harvard Common Press, 2009).
“There’s a multinationalism of drinks out there — many
more types and varietals of wines available and many more
types of ingredients to mix with them. You can make more
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 BEVERAGE TRENDS
MELISSA PUNCH
A.J. Rathbun, author of interesting drinks and take advantage of this
“Wine Cocktails,” mixes bounty of ingredients.”
up the traditional mimosa
In addition to boasting lower alcohol levels
with vanilla and pear
flavors and a vanilla pod and broader flavor options, wine and beer can
for garnish. add complexity, high acids and depth to
cocktails, all characteristics mixologists
demand. Beer can inject a robustly grainy tang,
and those with hoppy notes add a welcome
bitterness. Meanwhile, the flavor profiles of
wines can include pineapple, vanilla, apple,
pear, blackberry, cherry and other fruit notes.
Due mainly to their lower alcohol content, beer
and wine drinks provide a better match for most
spicy cuisines: high-alcohol beverages leave a
burning sensation on a palate opened by spices.
120 FLAVOR & THE MENU Summer 2009
HISTORICALLY IN THE MIX
Of course, to beer and wine aficionados,
adding anything post-production to their
favorite tipple seems sacrilegious. The odd
Champagne cocktail and old, standby beer
mixtures like the Black and Tan are
grudgingly accepted, but many contemporary
drinkers tend to burrow deeper into their
category of choice rather than experiment
with a mixologist’s creations.
But both beer and wine have long been
served mixed. Brewing cultures frequently
blended different beer styles or added
flavoring agents. In most European societies,
fortified wines (like vermouth and port) and
sparkling wines were the base for mixed
drinks, punches and fizzes.
Today, many wine-focused restaurant
operators see an advantage to serving
sparkling-wine cocktails, as their perceived
elegance makes them an easy entry point. At
the Purple Café and Wine Bar in Seattle, 16
Champagne cocktails appear on the wine list,
including most of the classics, like the French
75, made with gin and sweetened lemon juice,
and the Mimosa, made with orange juice.
Newer drinks like the Sea Captain’s Special
are made with rye, pastis and Champagne.
PLAYING TO STRENGTHS
Other wine-based drinks, such as sangrias,
have become popular again, appearing in
many modern iterations on chain and
independent restaurant menus: Caribbean-
themed Bahama Breeze prominently features
four sangrias (spice berry, rock melon,
blackberry and mango), made with white, red
or white zinfandel.
Restaurants serving a broad range of beers
are also likely candidates to spearhead the
beer-cocktail trend. New York City’s Artisanal
Fromagerie, Bistro & Wine Bar has developed
a reputation for serving special brews, and now
the restaurant hosts Brew Tuesday, when beers
are discounted and pairings with cheese are
promoted. Last winter, the program expanded
to feature five beer cocktails.
“It’s something interesting for the beer
drinker,” says Artisanal’s beverage director,
Ian Nal. “We have a lot of guests who are
serious about beer, and it gives them a chance
to try something new and interesting.”
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Artisanal’s cocktails feature 2 or 3 ounces
of beer as part of the ingredient mix, rather
than standard beer portions dosed with an
added ingredient or two. Some recipes are
familiar: the East Side Story is a sort of mojito
made with rum, lime, muddled mint and a
hefeweizen beer, while the Cabo San Lager is
a play on the Margarita, lightened with beer.
Other drinks are more creative: La Fleur
combines citrus vodka, elderflower liqueur,
lemon and hefeweizen. The Tennessee Peach
mixes Jack Daniels, peach schnapps, peach
puree, lemon and lime juices with a nut-
brown ale.
A GREATER PART OF THE MIX
When Beaumont started creating beer
cocktails at Beerbistro, he drew inspiration
from his travels in France, where good beer
bars routinely offered beer cocktails, such as
the Amer Biere, made with the bitter orange
cordial Amer Picon and beer. He also
encountered elaborate concoctions like the
Biere Flambé, which called for brandy to be
flamed in a glass, followed by a pour of beer
that slowly raised the fire as the glass filled.
While flaming drinks are largely frowned
upon in the United States, other mixers are
becoming more common. At the newly
opened Manhattan tequila bar, Mayahuel,
owner Phil Ward has assembled a cocktail list
that includes both beer- and wine-based
drinks. From its opening in April 2009, he’s
offered tequila sangrias combining
strawberry-infused tequila with rosé wine and
elderflower; another version uses jalapeno-
infused tequila with vermouth, sugar cane
and lime.
Ward also showcases classic cheladas, or
Mexican beers, with lime and salt, as well as
Micheladas, Mexican beer with sangrita, the
traditional tequila accompaniment made
from tomatoes, orange juice, lime juice,
onions, salt and chiles. A new creation, El
Jimador’s Shifty, combines pineapple-infused
mescal, lime, sugar cane and dark Mexican
beer served with a spiced-salt rim.
In Seattle last spring, Jamie Boudreau, bar
director for Tini Bigs and a spirit and cocktail
consultant, introduced a new cocktail menu
with a section of wine-based drinks for
warmer weather. When developing recipes
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BEVERAGE TRENDS
The
FLAVOR PAYOFF
Stay Ahead with Beer
By Maria Caranfa, director, Mintel Menu Insights
Research conducted by Mintel Menu Insights in May 2009 shows beer
leading the way in alcohol sales in retail, restaurant and bar settings.
The sales power of artisan and craft brews continues to turn heads in
the industry, while sophisticated cocktails also make waves.
Combining beer and cocktail concepts to create new beer cocktails is
a winning recipe for beverage programs in all segments and sizes.
Examples from some innovative operations provide six blueprints for
putting beer into a range of cocktail mixes:
1. Add to Classics: New York City’s Joshua Tree restaurant
and bar adds a head of Guinness to its Black Russian, made
with Finlandia vodka, Tia Maria and cola.
2. Play Up Flavors: Back Forty in New York City plays up the
sweet, herbaceous and earthy notes of Left Hand Brewery’s
Sawtooth Ale by mixing it with DH Krahn gin and lemon and
serving it in a pilsner glass rimmed with local honey and salt.
3. Make Local Heroes: Incorporate local and house-made
brews into locally inspired cocktails. Nacional 27, a Lettuce
Entertain You restaurant in Chicago, created the Chicagoan,
a blend of Irish whiskey sour, Chicago’s Goose Island 312
beer float and a sport pepper more commonly found on the
Chicago hot dog.
4. Pick Fruit: Enhance the fruit flavors in beer with like-
minded mixers. Casa Nueva of Athens, Ohio, makes a
Raspberry Wheat Mimosa by mixing Marietta Brewing Co.’s
Raspberry Wheat draft with chilled orange juice.
5. Run with the Popular Crowd: Find ways to add a splash
of beer to your best-selling drinks. Casual chain restaurant
Claim Jumper mixes its Fool’s Gold Margarita with traditional
flavors of 1800 Silver Tequila, Cointreau, sweet-and-sour
mix and fresh lemon and lime juices, topped off with a splash
of Claim Jumper hefeweizen, served on the rocks with a
salted rim.
6. Go All Day: In Chicago, Uncommon Ground’s Beermosa
proves that beer has a place at breakfast or brunch. The
combination of Bell’s Oberon wheat beer and orange juice is
an easy morning mix; the juice picks up on the beer’s fruity,
spicy notes.
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BEVERAGE TRENDS
using wine, Boudreau looks for those with
expressive fruit and low tannins — easy to
find in the fruit-forward world of modern
winemaking.
“I think of the wines as vermouth, and in
trying to figure out how to use them, I
thought, ‘How does vermouth work in a
drink?’” says Boudreau, who has worked with
a winery to develop wine-based cocktails that
have appeared on numerous restaurant
menus. “With a shiraz, I thought of what goes
with sweet vermouth; with a Sauvignon
Blanc, I thought of dry vermouth.”
Wine is the main ingredient in these
drinks, and spirits are applied as an accent,
the way a cordial would be in a spirit-based
cocktail. Boudreau’s spring 2009 menu for
Tini Bigs included Aude Man Thyme,
made with chardonnay, gin, thyme and
peach puree.
This newcomer joined a circa-19th century
recipe for Wine Cobbler, made with Pineau des
Charentes (a fortified wine), peach puree and
grapefruit bitters, on Tini Bigs’ menu. Another
notable is the Incan Gold, made with
Sauvignon Blanc, pisco, pomegranate juice,
lemon juice and peaches.
Rathbun, whose book includes a section
about drinks based on white, red, rosé,
sparkling and dessert wines, says wine-tails
work best when they are easily quaffable, light
in alcohol, refreshing and fun.
“I’m always looking for something that
offers a little more personality,” he says. “And
with so many wine drinkers today, wine
cocktails are a way to get them interested and
drag wine-only people over into cocktails.”
TAK E -AWAY T I P S
HEAT CONTROL: Highly spiced foods are a great match
for wine- and beer-based mixed drinks; their lower alcohol
content helps cool the palate rather than adding to the burn,
as hard liquors can do
EASY ENTRY: Cocktails incorporating sparkling wines are
an easy sell; the concept isn’t too “far out,” there’s a
perception of elegance, and wine-drinkers will take the leap
into the cocktail realm
PORTION CONTROL: Just a few ounces of beer is all that’s
needed as a supporting ingredient in a cocktail; take care not
to overdose with a standard beer portion
122 FLAVOR & THE MENU Summer 2009
SIMMERED-DOWN FLAVORS
Chefs have long employed wine reductions,
and creative mixologists have borrowed the
technique for drink applications, adding
sweeteners, herbs, spices, salt or fruit before
reducing. Boudreau has done the same with
beer. In one drink, he made a beer-based
bitter amaro flavored with orange, which he
added to a lager beer.
He also made a reduction from a Belgium
framboise lambic that he uses in cocktails in
place of commercially made raspberry liqueur.
With his own reductions, he’s able to control
the level of alcohol and sugar in a drink, key
to making balanced cocktails.
Among the obvious rules to consider when
introducing wine- or beer-based drinks to
customers:
> Work with ingredients you already have.
Start by researching classic recipes and
adjust according to your concept or
modern tastes.
> Go slowly to gauge whether your customer
base is interested in the concept.
> Always use the best fruit and juices, and
experiment with various sweeteners.
> Look for good, but not rare or more-
expensive ingredients when creating new
drink mixes.
And remember to keep it new: Artisanal’s
Nal plans to change his beer-cocktail menu
seasonally, adding perhaps watermelon and
mint to the mix as the weather warms.
“I think you always have to keep things
lively, and people are more receptive to
cocktails these days,” Boudreau says.
Chefs don’t rest on the tried and true;
neither should mixologists. And, with the
competition in the restaurant business
ratcheted up by the current recession,
adding new twists and anticipating
customers’ needs is absolutely essential,
whether in beers, wines or cocktails — or
all three. &
JACK ROBERTIELLO writes about
spirits, cocktails, wine, beer and food from
Brooklyn, N.Y.; he can be e-mailed at
applejak@earthlink.net.
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