The Session 27: Beer Cocktails

The Session this month is hosted by Beer At Joes and is called Beyond the Black and Tan (Beer Cocktails). In America a Black and Tan is a mixture of pale ale and porter but we don't get them in Ireland. A word of warning if you're American walking into most Irish bars and asking for a Black and Tan will at best get you a three hour history lesson from a drunk local and at worst you'll be asked to leave. I think the closest we get to beer cocktails in Ireland is when women get Guinness with a dash of blackcurrant cordial in them. Usually though the blackcurrant is just put in there until you get used to the taste and then you just drink normal Guinness.

The other time I saw a beer cocktail was when I was in Havana last year. In the Caribbean they are crazy for cocktails and in Cuba the mojito is king. I love mojitos and due to almost constant food poisoning I gave up eating and just drank mojitos for the few days we were there. We went to Taverna de la Muralla on the Plaza Vieja which is Havana's brew pub. They brew three beers and they also offer beer cocktails. One was a mojito made with their blonde ale. It's a nice if odd drink. It tasted more of mojito than beer if I remember rightly.

Dave has blogged before about the insane combination of Guinness and Red Bull that you get in Jamaica. It tastes horrible but that's not the point. We asked some barmen in our hotel what we should drink at a wedding in Kingston and they said Guinness and Red Bull so you get drunk and can dance all night. You certainly need energy if you're going to be dancing to Jamaican dancehall all night. Dancehall sounds like a bunch of power tools being randomly being turned on and off. It makes no sense until you dance to it. Though being Irish we weren't very good, all the Jamaicans are incredible dancers, even old grannies and they know all the moves to every song.

I can't resist putting up this photo again as it's so funny. It's The Beer Nut and Dave enjoying a picon beer. It's bavaria mixed with sirop de picon. I like Bavaria as it reminds me of sitting outside the Pav bar in Trinity watching the cricket. Me and my pals would come up from our underground laser lab to see some real daylight and drink a six pack of cheap Bavaria. Even better the crazy, french, obsessed by physics postdoc I worked with would go home and not come to the pub. He never talked about anything but our project and talking about resonance energy transfer in nanocrystals while slightly merry was never a forte of mine. We never knew that we could have claimed to be classy by pouring in some picon into our cans.

I really don't know many beer cocktails but maybe in honour of this session I'll try some of the ones posted by fellow session bloggers this weekend.