The Spirit World

The beer purists out there might scoff at the idea of adulterating a pilsener or a pale ale with a shot of liqueur or a few ounces of fruit juice. You remember my post about the controversy over putting a slice of lemon on the edge of a glass filled with hefeweizen? If a slice of lemon can get beer aficionados all in a twist, imagine what their reaction would be to mixing the hefeweizen with lemonade! Actually, I’ve never mixed lemonade with hefeweizen, but I might just do that to scandalize the purists.

One thing I have seen put into hefeweizen or American wheat beer is raspberry liqueur. The first time I saw this mixture served at a pub was last March. I had just gone down to Baltimore to observe the St Patrick’s Day festivities and visit the brewpubs down there. I was on my way back to Long Island. I got off the train at Penn Station in Manhattan, calculated that I had a little over an hour and half before the next train – just enough time to walk down to the Heartland Brewery on 5th Avenue (at the base of the Empire State Building). I sampled the Irish Red and the Stout that day.

A couple walked up and sat down in the stools next to me at the bar. They were tourists from Australia, thirsty tourists. The man wanted a “pint of lager”, but the woman didn’t know what she wanted. She said she wasn’t fond of lager and at the moment didn’t fancy a glass of wine. The quick bartender suggested that she try a “raspberry wheat.” Of course, I’m eavesdropping, so when the bartender mentions “raspberry wheat” I start scanning the beer list to see if I missed something. I had studied the beer list carefully and even made notes in my handy moleskine notebook. No. There was no “raspberry wheat” on the list. There was a wheat beer, but the list didn’t say anything about raspberries.

From where I sat at the bar, I had a good view of the taps and so I could observe what the bartender was doing. He grabbed a bottle of raspberry liqueur and dispensed a single shot into a pint glass. Then he picked up the pint glass and began to twirl the glass while leaning it over to coat the sides of the glass with the liqueur. Then he dispensed a pint of his wheat beer into the pint glass. When he presented the rosy (almost pink-orange) hazy drink to the woman her eyes widened. She took a tentative sip and then grinned. “That’s pretty good,” she said. “It’s not like beer at all.”

The next day I loaded my family into a car and we drove to Pennsylvania for a week long pub tour. Just about all the brewpubs I visited that week had some kind of beer cocktail menu and the raspberry wheat was on at least two of the lists. So ever since last March I’ve been thinking I should research this whole beer cocktail phenomenon further. I’ve decided with the new year, that it’s time to earn that degree in beer mixology.