Brews with Attitude: 5 Mixed Drinks Made with Beer

A few cocktail experts have succeeded in working beer into honest-to-God cocktails, although they're usually not using the kind of beer you can find at the local Kwik-E-Mart. The beer drinks that have stood the test of time tend to be simple, ungimmicky things: beer, an extra ingredient or two, and done. Esquire has mentioned a couple of these over the years — the Cincinnati Cocktail (beer and seltzer; very refreshing), the sublime Michelada (pictured at left; beer, lime, hot sauce, seasoning) — but has by no means exhausted the category. Here are four more, each combining the quaffing pleasure of a beer with some of that element of surprise you get from a cocktail. Plus, we've tacked on an extra one of our own, just for fun.

Ancient, rich, sweet, rewarding, and simple.

Recipe: Fill a pint glass 1/4 of the way with chilled porter. (We generally use Anchor or Geary's.) Stir in 1 tsp superfine sugar or, better, 1 tsp demerara sugar syrup (made with 2 parts raw sugar to 1 part water, heated and stirred until sugar has dissolved) and fill glass with cracked ice. Slowly top off with more porter until full. Grate nutmeg over the top.

A classic. The most elegant and delicious of beer drinks.

Recipe: Fill a champagne flute halfway with chilled stout. (Guinness is effective, but if you can get Brooklyn Black Ops, you'll be in a whole other world.) Top off slowly with chilled brut champagne; this is a good use for that bottle of Veuve Clicquot you've been meaning to drink.

Berlin's traditional wheat beer is drunk with a schuss, or shot, of either green waldmeister syrup (germandeli.com) or red-raspberry syrup in it. Most pleasant.

Recipe: Pour a 1 oz schuss of waldmeister or raspberry syrup into a large wheat-beer glass. Slowly add 16 oz cold Berliner Kindl Weisse or other light German-style wheat beer.

When we were putting this article together, a question came up: What do you do with, say, Budweiser? What about a superpeaty Scotch, the kind that's almost too smoky to drink? Bingo. The Scotch calms down; the Bud mans up.

Recipe: Pour 1 oz ultrasmoky single-malt Scotch, such as Ardbeg or Laphroaig, into a pint glass. Add 12 oz chilled Bud or other American pilsner.