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Beer usually kicks it solo, but these brew cocktails prove it plays surprisingly well with others.
For some, the thought of mixing beer with anything else is almost sacrilege. But beer’s a surprisingly versatile mixer, and it goes well with both hard liquor and juices. Here’s our DIY guide to making your own—or instructing your favorite bartender.
The Shandy Half beer, half lemonade, shandies should be made with pale ale because it combines with the lemonade to produce a really bright, flavorful drink with neither beverage overpowering the other. If you want to get fancy, try beer that already has citrus notes, like Hoegaarden.
The Snakebite So tasty, you’ll be flat-out wrecked in a flash and insisting it’s “cuddle time” to everyone around. Snakebites are traditionally a half-and-half combo of hard cider and lager, but we also like them with an ale, especially Brooklyn’s Summer Ale. Moving into autumn, a nutty lager like Sprecher’s Oktoberfest brings a nutty, fruity dimension. Just about any hard cider works, even high-school stuff like Woodchuck.
Beergaritas Beergaritas rock the hardest when they’re as bare bones as possible—cheap beer and premade margarita mix (including the tequila) in equal measure is the only way to go. In a tornado of trashiness, the weird-bad tastes cancel each other out and you’re left with a tasty, violently potent drink.
Cheladas and micheladas Cheladas are just a beer with a shot of lime juice added and a salted rim on the glass; micheladas add Worcestershire sauce, Tabasco and Clamato, (which not everyone likes, so we make this drink with tomato juice instead). Inauthentic, maybe, but so many people seem to be on clam juice–free diets these days.
