“A shot and a beer!” has been called out, loudly and lustily, in American bars for generations. But it’s not the kind of order you expect to hear in today’s hushed temples of the craft cocktail, where complexity and creativity are often prized over a belt and a brew.
In the last year or so, however, the boilermaker, as the classic combo is often called, has elbowed its way into dozens of bars where the bartenders know their aperitifs from their digestifs.
Like slinging Pabst and cranking up the music, the return of boilermakers is a symptom of the cocktail world’s recent loosening of its collective collar. Four years ago, a menu filled with amaro- or mezcal-based drinks was a signal to customers that a cocktail bar took its trade seriously. Today, a shot-and-beer offering says the same sort of bar doesn’t take itself that seriously.
“It’s a return to simplicity,” said Natasha David, an owner of Nitecap, in New York City. “At the end of the day, there is something nice about having something that’s comfortable for you.”
Some bars offer a single combination: At Billy Sunday, in Chicago, the Shift Drink (Elijah Craig 12-year-old bourbon and Metropolitan Krankshaft Kölsch) is thrown in among the other listed cocktails. Other establishments, like Trick Dog in San Francisco, Barrel Proof and Oxalis in New Orleans, and Nitecap, devote a whole section of the bar menu to the genre. That also goes for one of the newest bars in New York City, named, yes, Boilermaker.
Many of these pairings are the usual cheap-whiskey-and-cheaper-beer marriages one expects, often involving either Old Grand-Dad bourbon or Mellow Corn, a Kentucky whiskey. But some are nothing that Joe the bartender at the Bucket of Suds would call a boilermaker.
“Of course, we are a cocktail bar, so we approach everything in a nerdy cocktail way,” 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.
In this way, boilermakers are a handy way for bartenders to showcase spirits and beers they enjoy “and like to get out there,” said Morgan Schick, creative director of Trick Dog.
“They’re basically just things that we like to drink,” agreed David, who also sells a group boilermaker consisting of a 375-milliliter bottle of amontillado sherry and four ponies of Little Kings Original Cream Ale.
Most bartenders seem to enjoy boilermakers as much as they like beer and whiskey on their own. But they split on how best to drink them. Liam Deegan, a partner at Barrel Proof, prefers to knock back the shot and then move on to the beer. David goes back and forth, sipping on each in turn. Schick calls himself “a drop-it-in guy”; like many drinkers, he drops the shot, glass and all, into the beer, then proceeds to drink.
“For me,” he said, “part of the fun of it is that satisfying clunk it makes.”
The audience for these boilermakers varies widely. Most bartenders mentioned here said they sell plenty to others in the food industry, who gravitate toward the more adventurous departures. Yet the beer-and-shot combination is also ordered by young men, professionals in suits and bachelorette parties.
“It’s really democratic,” said Mike Friedman, a restaurateur who is a regular at Barrel Proof, where he typically orders the $5 Old Grand-Dad and Schlitz pairing. “It’s really simple and not pretentious in any way, and kind of old school.”
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