Beaumont Stephen - Cocktails on tap : the art of mixing spirits and beer

TO MY PARENTS, WHO NEVER QUESTIONED TOO MUCH
MY DUBIOUS CAREER CHOICES

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CONTENTS

FOREWORD

WELCOME TO THE CURIOUS, SOMETIMES ODD, AND NEARLY ALWAYS INTERESTING WORLD OF BEER COCKTAILS. AS YOULL FIND IN THE FOLLOWING PAGES, RATHER THAN BEING A MERE AFFECTATION OF MODERN MIXOLOGY, DRINKS MADE WITH BEER AS AN INGREDIENT HAVE A LONG AND STORIED HISTORY, SPANNING CENTURIES AND CONTINENTS.

My personal history with beer cocktails, on the other hand, dates back a mere couple of decades, to when I discovered them in the altogether unlikely milieu of Paris, France.

The time was the mid- to late 1990s, and although I was by then an established beer scribe with a trio of books under my belt, family matters brought me to French wine country on a surprisingly regular basis, usually on visits ending with a few days in the capital. Thirsting for good beer after a week or two of wine drinking, I would prowl the handful of legitimate beer bars in Paris, eventually becoming fascinated by the lists of beer cocktails uniformly available in each and every one.

, to more inventive creations like the bire flambe, an entire 750-ml bottle of Chimay Premire poured into an oversized chalice and topped with a generous, flaming floater of brandy.

My curiosity thus stimulated, I began to experiment with beer cocktails on my own, eventually establishing a small list of them in the Toronto beer cuisine restaurant and bar I helped open, beerbistro. Perhaps predictably, most were initially subject to, at best, extreme skepticism and, at worst, open derision, at least until the disbelievers allowed themselves a sip.

Time passes and minds open, however, and while it would be premature or even foolhardy to suggest that beer cocktails are today accepted without question, they are certainly less controversial and more commonly found than they were a decade or so ago. The book you now hold in your hands is testament to that fact, both in its existence and its contents.

What Jacob Grier and his merry band of collaborators have produced within the following pages puts my early and limited experimentations to shame. Following a suitably respectful look at hot and cold beer drinks of the distant and more recent past, Jake turns his considerable talents to expanding and, in some cases, redefining the lexicon of beer cocktails, a task he accomplishes with great style and taste. That his introductory notes for each drink make for such enjoyable, sometimes compelling, reading is just the proverbial icing on the cakeor in this case, I suppose, the garnish on the glass.

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Thus introduced to the near-infinite flavors and aromas inherent in beer cocktails, its my guess that it wont be long before you begin pulling out the pilsners and porters and IPAs and experimenting with your own formulations. And with the wealth of beers available today, what a long and fruitful journey that will be!

Stephen Beaumont, coauthor of The World Atlas of Beer and The Pocket Beer Guide 2015

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REVIVING THE BEER COCKTAIL

ALTHOUGH THE UNITED STATES IS IN THE MIDST OF A CRAFT COCKTAIL RENAISSANCE THAT REVELS IN UNIQUE INGREDIENTS AND UNUSUAL COMBINATIONS, BEER REMAINS AN UNDERUTILIZED INGREDIENT BEHIND THE BAR.

A skeptical attitude toward mixing other ingredients with beer goes back a long time. Theres not much you can do with beer, except indulge in the pleasant task of drinking it, says Esquires Handbook for Hosts (1949). Until the last few years, that was the attitude in the craft cocktail world too.

). Once staples of tavern life, by the mid-twentieth century these drinks had become relics of days gone by.

In the nineteenth centuryand for hundreds of years beforeusing beer in drinks was absolutely normal. Adding sugar, spice, and spirits was common practice. So was heating beer over a fire or by plunging a red-hot poker into it, to serve it warm on a cold night.

Even the lines between food and drink were sometimes a bit blurry. Drinks like Aleberry, caudles, and possets were standard fare in homes and taverns. These combined beer or wine with grain, milk, cream, or eggs to thicken them, providing both nutrition and a warming drink.

Not all of these appeal to modern drinkers. A terrible drink... with a terrible name, writes Alice Morse Earle in Customs and Fashions in Old New England (1894), was whistle-belly vengeance. It consisted of sour household beer simmered in a kettle, sweetened with molasses, filled with brown-bread crumbs and drunk piping hot.

Historian Dorothy Hartley, in her 1954 book Food in England, explains that modern travelers, accustomed to comfortable transport and regular meals, no longer feel the need for such soup wine or ale meal. When travel was harder and meals were scarce, these struck a happy medium for the weary traveler.

After long hours of travel, hot wine, or spirits, on an empty stomach, were not too good, and yet often you were too tired to eat. Thus, the compromise of a caudle, which warmed you, fed you, and kept you going till you could obtain a solid meal.

Even in the 1950s, Hartley wrote that the custom of a food drink persisted among the working poor and rural folk. But by the latter half of the twentieth century, these drinks were well on their way out. What happened?

For one thing, the beer changed, and largely for the better. Owners of old-fashioned pubs and taverns didnt get their beer in sterile metal kegs or clean glass bottles like they do today. It was often brewed on site, a living thing kept at cellar temperatures in wooden casks and tended by the owner.

This sounds romanticand good cask-conditioned ale today is rightfully held in high regardbut quality wasnt always assured. The ale could be too old, too yeasty, or spoiled by bacteria. It could be unpleasantly smoky with flavor carried over from barley malt roasted over flame. Or worse, it could have who-knows-what added to it to mask off flavors.

In his 1892 book The Flowing Bowl, William Schmidt cautioned drinkers about the adulterations common earlier in the century:

This healthy and agreeable beverage used to be prepared often enough from a mixture containing many violent poisons, as Indian hemp, opium, sulphuric acid, sulphate of iron, etc.nay, the addition of strychnia, even was suspected.

The 1871 edition of Oxford Night Caps encourages readers to make drinks with home-brewed beer for the same reason, noting the various ways common brewers and publicans corrupted their beer with frightening additions. Presumably there was some exaggeration here, but if the beer was unreliable, one can imagine why drinkers liked to add sugar, spice, and everything nice to cover up its defects.