Not For Beer Purists: The Michelada
October 6th, 2008
Hair of the Dog is Cookthink’s Monday morning cocktail column by Rob Chirico, the author of the Field Guide to Cocktails. Read more about Rob here.
The singular purpose of most beer cocktails is to stave off sobriety — as quickly as possible. If you seek incomprehensibility, temporary amnesia and a bar floor for your bedding, a drink like a Boilermaker (a shot of Scotch poured into a mug of beer) is for you. The frat house classic, Skip and Go Naked (made from however much beer, gin, grenadine and lemon juice you have), is mixed in a garbage pail with a ski pole.
As I wrote in my Field Guide to Cocktails, “Generally speaking, the beer cocktail, or more apropos the beer confabulation, was devised by a conspiracy of malefactors whose goal is to defile the palate.” (Granted, the Black Velvet — half Champagne and half Guinness — created to commemorate the death of Prince Albert in 1861, is one of the few exceptions.)
That said, with the Root Source highlighting lager later this week, I have decided to share a brief history of one tolerable beer cocktail, the Michelada.
Considered to be a Mexican libation, some sources say that the Michelada is named after the Mexican Revolution’s General Augusto Michel, who supposedly drank his beer with hot sauce and lemon juice. It’s more likely that, like chili (which started as prison food made more palatable with spices), the beer was so bad that it required some assistance. The forerunner to the Michelada was the Chelada, simply made with a lager-style beer and lime juice, and sometimes salt. Kingsley Amis called it “an exit application from the human race if ever there was one.”
A word of caution: Do not attempt to make this or any beer cocktail around a beer purist unless you are trained in the martial arts.
Recipe: The Michelada (Hair of the Dog)
October 6th, 2008 at 9:51 am
I love micheladas! The micheladas that they serve at my favorite Mexican restaurant are somewhat thick like bloody marys and have a supremely spicy kick, just the way I like it! They go down smooth and easy and compliment delicious Mexican food very well! So good!
October 6th, 2008 at 12:57 pm
We tried the michelada yesterday. Definitely a hair of the dog cocktail - salty, fizzy, spicy and limey. If only I’d been out dancing on tables the night before instead of eating popcorn and licorice at the movies. I’d like to have another on of these watching football on the couch next Saturday.
October 6th, 2008 at 6:52 pm
No love for the shandy?
October 6th, 2008 at 8:00 pm
Sorry — I meant to include that…
October 7th, 2008 at 12:31 pm
Chili started as prison food? Please get smarter, or no one is gonna take your blog seriously.
October 7th, 2008 at 4:56 pm
In fact, there is quite the argument that apart from poor families and frontiersmen who had to make do with less-than-favorable cuts and qualities of meat, using various ingdredients to it palatable, prisons in Texas in the mid-1880s did likewise. As a result, Chili did in fact gain quite the reputation as decent chain gang fare, and Jane Butel points out in her Chili Madness, that some prisoners even broke parole to be recommitted in order to get the stuff.
More than likely it sprang up in many quarters of Texas around the same time, and there is no probable single origin. Although, however, gosh-darn-it, you could go with the story that in the early 17th century, the Spanish Sister Mary of Agreda recieved the recipe from Native American tribes in the Southwest while she was in one of her trances. But perhaps that was for Holy Mole.
October 7th, 2008 at 5:18 pm
This is all very interesting. My grandad, who was born in Texas, made the best chili. He always maintained that he got it from a prison cook in San Antonio. Holy Mole…ouch!