Ale Street News Online

A Conversation Between Stephen Beaumont and Lew Bryson

Stephen: Hey Lew, you may have heard that I’m going to be down in New Orleans this July at a great event called "Tales of the Cocktail," presenting a seminar on the use of beer as an ingredient in cocktails and helping your buddy, Gary Regan, host a "Spirited Dinner," where each course will be paired with an appropriate cocktail, some of which, naturally, will feature beer in their creation. Now, here’s the funny thing: While most of the mixiologists I know are fascinated by this notion of using beer as a flavor in cocktails, a lot of the beer folk I’ve mentioned this to have reacted in horror! Beer shouldn’t be "adulterated," they say, as if it’s some kind of borderline sacrosanct entity that should never be consumed in any other fashion than the exact way it left the building. What do you make of that?

Lew: That’s ridiculous, Steve! Beer "should never be consumed in any other fashion than the exact way it left the building." Who would say such a thing? Why, I almost always pour my bottled beer into a glass, it releases more aroma and excess carbonation. But if you’re talking about mixing beer with spirits or wine or some mix of cucumber-tansy pesto and paw-paw nectar, with a little pink umbrella stuck in it, I’m going to have to ask you to step outside. You won’t see Gary Regan doing that, I betcha. I’ve seen him drink whiskey, and I’ve seen him drink beer: two separate occasions. As it should be. Just because you decided to bilk these poor cocktailians out of a visit to New Orleans on this flimsy "beer cocktail" premise (nice gig, by the way; think I could sell them a "Bourbon and Ice Cream Sundaes" concept? Maybe "Rye Whiskey: a Smoother Body Shot"?) doesn’t mean it’s right. What kind of stuff are you putting in these things? What did it ever do to you to deserve it?

Stephen: Funny you should mention bourbon and rye whiskey, Lew. Because aren’t those also carefully crafted beverages that can be wonderful, even spectacular when sipped on their own? And don’t you also use them in the creation of cocktails? I do, in everything from Sazeracs to Manhattans to a Mint Julep to celebrate Derby Day. Does that make me a spirits sinner, the way some people believe that mixing beers with other ingredients makes me some sort of bastardizer of bock, adulterer of ale or despoiler of dubbel? And as for the inestimable Mr. Regan, well, not only has he mixed beer and spirits, but he’s done so to one of my recipes AND reproduced it in his San Francisco Chronicle column!

C’mon, Lew, admit that the very notion of a beer cocktail might not in and of itself be such a bad thing and I’ll let you in on some of my thoughts about how it’s best done.

Lew: Good Lord, man, first you want to put beer in cocktails, now you expect me to believe that spirits don’t belong there? It’s like saying we should put wings on cars and take them off airplanes! I love cocktails, you’ve seen me inhale them, and I don’t draw the line at using top-notch booze, as some will: put the Sazerac 18 Year Old Rye in the Sazerac, I say. But whiskey — or gin, or tequila, or eau de vie — isn’t beer.

If you can’t keep your hands off beer, and you just can’t help yourself from mucking with it, why not try something Gary Regan called a "fettler" (back before he went insane, apparently): a beer mixed with beer? I’m sure you’ve had a black and tan at some point, right? I’ve been mixing beers for over 20 years, and as you well know, it hasn’t stunted my growth. But if you’re hell-bent on mixing beer with booze, I got two words for you: Boiler. Maker. It’s a beautiful cocktail (David Wondrich says so), and each drink knows its place. That little glass is whiskey, and this big glass, this one here? It’s beer. Vitreous privacy. There’s my thought on how it’s best done.

Stephen: A "beautiful cocktail" that’s nothing more than one glass of spirits beside another of beer, Lew? Please. That’s nothing more than a thinly veiled attempt to promote Wondrich’s column in the latest issue of Malt Advocate, and you know it. Shame on you, good sir!

A "fettler," on the other hand, is a sort of cocktail, in that it combines two beverages to make a composite that tastes differently than do either of the two parts. (And before you say a cocktail is by definition more complicated than that, I’ll offer three words to you: Mar. Ti. Ni.) I make "fettlers," or beer blends, as I less grandiosely like to call them — Regan’s a nice guy, but he can be a bit of a pretentious git — all the time. Love ‘em! So much so, in fact, that I sometimes take the idea one step further, as with the "Bourbon Black and Tan" we quite successfully featured at beerbistro for a while: An ounce of good bourbon, about half a bottle of nutty, malty brown ale, topped with a half-bottle of creamy oatmeal stout. You should try it some time, like now. Hell, it’s almost the start of the weekend!

Lew: David Wondrich needs no promotion, because he’s a genius. Why, since you mention him (and with a proper plug, thanks), I’ll even admit I recently read about Wondrich putting beer in a cocktail. Wow. Maybe you’re...oh, no, right, when he made the drink, a hot whiskey punch that calls for grated chocolate and "sour beer," he tasted it and immediately apologized, saying "I can see why people wouldn’t like this." Ringing endorsement, that.

Besides, if I want bourbon flavor in my beer — which I do like sometimes — the brewers do it for me. I know you’ve enjoyed the bourbon barrel-aged beers that have flooded the market. I celebrate this, it is confirmation of beer as a created thing. When we want beer to taste a certain way, that’s how we make it. Even...gin-like, God help me, as in the regrettable Sting Ray malt product from the 1970s, surely one of the best cautionary tales for keeping booziness away from beer.

I guess that’s what I’d like to know: why? Why this mad rush to put beer in a cocktail? It seems like wanting to put ice cream on a pork roast.

Stephen: "Grated chocolate and sour beer"? No wonder he apologized for it — sounds thoroughly disgusting. Now, a little Hanssens Kriek with Rogue Chocolate Stout, on the other hand, that sounds delicious. Oh, wait, it IS delicious, as a whole roomful of beer aficionados discovered a few years back when I served the "Spontaneous Sebbie" at a Monk’s Cafe beer dinner.

Honestly, Lew, you sound like a timid old maiden aunt with your "beer is fine as it is and change frightens me" attitude. Where would the beer world be if brewers everywhere got scared and said "why do this" instead of "what the hell, let’s do it!"? Without X.O., a tasty French beer that combines ale with X.O. cognac, for one, and certainly bereft of many of the adventurous concoctions those barrel-savvy brewers you so admire have come up with over the years. The question is not "why," my friend, it’s "why not."

And here’s an excellent argument for "why not:" Rinse a Duvel glass with a drop or two of Pernod, shaking out the excess afterward, add one ounce of aromatic gin and fill with a full, properly poured bottle of Duvel. It’s something I call a "Green Devil," and in no way is it an improvement on Duvel, which I happen to think is a pretty exceptional beer on its own, but rather it’s an alternative way in which to enjoy the beer, and a pretty damn tasty one, too. Tasty enough, in fact, that I can count the president of Duvel USA among its fans.

In point of fact, Lew, there is no "mad rush" to use beer in cocktails, just a healthy and slowly developing curiosity. And the craft brewing industry is definitely into it, too — just look at the blended anniversary beers from Firestone Walker, the Collaboration Not Litigation Ale from Russian River and Avery, and the way other breweries from Allagash to Lost Abbey to Dogfish Head are using multiple barrel types to add complexity to their beers. You just know that if fortifying beers with wine and spirits were legal in the US, Americans would have long since seen their first bottled beer and spirits combinations, as they have in Belgium, Holland, France and even my homeland of Canada.

Lew: Why do you bring up a wonderful thing like your Spontaneous Sebbie as an argument in YOUR favor? No issues here, old friend: beer + beer = beer, a beautifully balanced equation. We could end the discussion right there, if it weren’t for your mad insistence on pouring booze in there as well. Timid maiden aunt? My great aunts just had lunch at a brewpub, bless their souls, and three had beer (Vienna Lager), and two had cocktails (Old Fashioneds), and I’m happy to report that none of them felt a need to mix the two.

Change doesn’t frighten anyone who’s been through two kids who loved the Gerber Broccoli Puree. But this constant cry of "Why not?!" has brought us such delights as Dixie White Moose, Dogfish Head’s unfortunate lavender-peppercorn hefeweizen, and a variety of garlic beers. If the best argument you can muster for "why not" is the fact that the president of Duvel USA endorses a new way for people to drink more Duvel...in related news, the president of Oscar Meyer endorsed bacon as a bicycle chain lubricant.

You can’t equate adding spirits or wine to beer to the use of barrel-aging. It’s much more than the taste of the booze, it’s the wood character, the same reason the distiller or vintner used the barrel in the first place.

But let’s take a break for a second and find out just how far apart we are. You say "beer cocktail" and I get the shakes thinking of tequila and triple sec floating on a salt-rimmed mug of doppelbock. What exactly does "beer cocktail" encompass for you?

Stephen: I mention the Spontaneous Sebbie, my good man, because it IS a beer cocktail, same as a Green Devil or Black and Tan or Colonial-era Beer Flip. (Oh yeah, did I not mention that this beer cocktail thing had been around for centuries?) But you ask me for a philosophy, so how about this:

A beer cocktail is any drink in which beer is blended with one or more other liquids, be they beers, wines, spirits or juices, to form a new drink that tastes different than the beer on its own, but still respects the flavour, craftsmanship and character of the original beer.

That work for you?

Lew: Ah, now if you’re going to broaden the definition of ‘beer cocktail’ to include something I’m already in favor of...that’s a beautiful thing, and so much in the inclusionary spirit of beer. Wait, did I say ‘spirit’? I meant to say ‘the inclusionary character of beer’! I’ll vote for that definition, because it leaves both of us room for personal choice. Works for me. I’ll keep to the singular beauty of beer, you can do...that thing you do. Cheers!

Stephen: Fair enough, my good man, but you don’t know what you’re missing. Tell you what, the next time we meet up, the Green Devils are on me!