The Spirit World

I wanted to make some comments before getting to the main point of today’s Brewsday post. You’ll remember from last week (I hope) that I have developed an interest in mixing beer with other beverages. My determination to explore this mixological territory was redoubled when I opened up a cocktail book a few days ago and read this: “Beer and cider are the least used of all alcoholic drinks in cocktails. They do come in handy for punches and mulled ale recipes, but as ingredients in short mixed drinks, they have only a limited number of applications.” [This from p. 236 of The Ultimate Book of Cocktails by Stuart Walton.] Limited number of applications? Why?

That sounds like a challenge to me. From this beer man’s perspective ales and lagers should make a versatile base for a wide range of cocktails. But why hasn’t this territory been adequately explored? My suspicion is that most people’s idea of beer stops with the run-o-the-mill yellow beer sold in such massive quantities in US. Hypothesis: if mixologists had access to the wide palate of commercial craftbeer from which formulate cocktails (and they do), this would multiply the “number of applications” for beer and cider in mixed drinks.

But before I start innovating, I thought I would cover some well traveled territory just to get myself oriented in this field of adulterated beer. Since it’s near the New Year I was thinking what could be done with that obligatory bottle of champagne/sparkling wine that might make it a little more interesting. Why not mix it with a pint of stout?

This venerable combination is called a Black Velvet, though Black Gold or Texas Tea seem like equally likely monikers for sparkling wine and stout. According to the aforementioned book by Walton, a Black Velvet is made by pouring a half glass of stout, allowing the stout to settle, then topping the glass with brut sparkling wine. Simple.

I selected Beamish Stout for my first iteration. Beamish is one of my favorite stouts. I actually prefer it to Guinness when I have the option. For the sparkling wine, I picked up a bottle of Domaine Ste. Michelle Brut. When I poured the sparkling wine into the stout, the result was (understandably and predictably) a prodigious production of foam. But how did it taste? you ask. Well, the combination was pleasant to drink. The sparkling wine effectively destroyed the velvety smoothness of the stout by itself, but the stout covered up the “winey” flavor of the sparkling wine. On the whole, the sparkling wine was improved, but I’m not certain that the stout was.

For comparison, I mixed some of the sparkling wine with a glass of my own homebrewed stout porter and that was a very different experience indeed. The strong coffee and roasty notes in my stout porter dominated the sparkling wine. The sparkling wine added sweetness and effervescence. Basically, what this showed me was that the selection of the base beer for making the Black Velvet is very important. Different stouts will combine differently with the same sparkling wine to yield different drinks. Conclusion, beer mixologists would do well to specify the base beer in their recipes.