Beer as a Mixer?

Posted by Angie Rayfield May 10, 2007

There have always been drinks made by mixing hard liquor with beer, but generally speaking, most of them don’t seem like true cocktails – the sort of thing a bartender would mix up and garnish carefully. Many of them – the boiler maker, the carbomb, the Mountain Dew – are simply a shot of liquor dropped into a beer, and usually chugged.

But lately, it seem there may be a bit of a trend towards using beer as a mixer to create a more traditional cocktail. There’s at least one website devoted to the idea – Drink Innovations (it probably won’t be a surprise that the site is the creation of a mass-market beer producer, Anheuser-Busch) . The site appears to be aimed squarely at the young adult market, the 20-somethings that have shown to be such a strong market for the sweeter malt beverages produced by Smirnoff and Bacardi, or the fruity drinks from Mike’s.

But the recipes featured on the site are, for the most part, slightly more elaborate cocktails, and include spirits and liqueurs that you might not associate with beer. For instance, there’s April’s featured recipe.

Budweiser Limonade

• 12 oz. Budweiser
• 1 oz. Bacardi Limon
• Splash of Peach Schnapps
• 3 oz. ginger ale
• 1 of Rose’s Lime Juice
• ½ oz. Grenadine

Mix all ingredients in a cocktail shaker and serve over ice in a tall hurricane glass. Garnish with a wedge of lemon.

Being the skeptical sort, I decided to try it for myself. To my surprise, it was a pretty good drink - light, slightly sweet, and fruity. I could easily imagine sipping one of these on the patio or lounging by the pool on a warm summer day.

Since I’m a little bit of a beer snob, I can’t imagine is using a top micro-brew or craft beer this way, but I’m honest enough to admit that not every beer is suitable for being savored as a work of art. Why not try using them as a mixer?