How to Make the Trendy New "Boilermaker" Drink the Times Wrote About
The classic combo of a shot and a beer, known countrywide as "the only reason life is really worth living," was given a little shine by the New York Times this week. If you thought that tasty matchup had fallen out of favor, you were wrong*—and this time, it's been reinvented with an elegant (expensive) twist:
"Of course, we are a cocktail bar, so we approach everything in a nerdy cocktail way," Ms. David said. And so at Nitecap you can order the Well-Travelled Shorty, which matches a slug of aquavit with Blanche de Bruxelles, a Belgian ale. At Trick Dog, Tecate beer is set up with a shot of Mandarine Napoléon orange liqueur. And at Longman & Eagle in Chicago, which sells a different shot and beer every Monday, the local beer Off Color Troublesome has been chased with an ounce of Bësk, an intensely bitter wormwood liqueur made by a local distiller.
While we applaud writing up literally any trend as a way to prove that astrology is real, writing a styles piece about boilermakers (which I personally identify as citywides) is like writing a styles piece about the side of fries. Sure, there are places doing some fucked-up shit to them, but they didn't go anywhere! Look, here's a recipe:
- one beer, any beer (found in trash, Heineken, whatever you can find)
- one shot of whiskey, any kind of whiskey (from a water bottle, who cares)
Drink.
Fin.
*And have never been to a bar.
