The Spirit World

I just got back from a week in Houston Texas. This is not the place you want to be during American Craft Beer Week — the one week during the year when beer geeks all over the US flock to their local breweries and brewpubs to collect points for the Great American Beer Tour. My situation would have been better had a rented a car instead of relying on my feet for transport.

Downtown Houston wasn’t completely devoid of beer. I did manage to find a couple of decent beer bars. I even found one place using Beermapping.com that advertised that they had the best Michelada’s in Texas. It was a bit of a walk from my hotel, but I’ll do anything for this column (well, almost).

When I arrived at my destination, a place called Little Woodrow’s, I sat down at the bar and when the bartender asked what I wanted, I said, “I like a Michelada.” The bartender knew what I was talking about at least, but informed me that it couldn’t be made since “we’re out of Bloody Mary mix.” I then asked the bartender if she was aware that the corporate web site advertised that Little Woodrow’s was famous for their Micheladas. “That’s weird. Maybe they serve them at another location.” There are several, after all. (Note: Don’t go to Little Woodrow’s if you are looking for good beer. Yes, they have a decent selection, but they abuse their beer by serving it in frosty glasses that stink of bleach.)

Anyway, all this banter with the bartender didn’t get me a Michelada. So when I got back to Long Island I thought I would whip up something that was related, a Chavela or Red Eye.

The Red Eye doesn’t have to be made with Mexican beer, but for the purposes of this series grab yourself a cerveza. The simplest form of the Chavela is to mix beer with Clamato juice. Mix to taste or in a one to one ratio, like a tomato/clam juice shandy.

If you want to get fancy, you can mix in a little hot sauce or salsa. I garnished my glass with a cocktail shrimp and a carrot. Since I didn’t have Clamato juice, I went with a mix of V8 with a dose of clam juice. The clam juice really makes the drink interesting and brings out the other flavors.

Even though this might sound like an esoteric drink, it’s actually something that people drink regularly in part of this country. For example, my father used to make Red Eyes all the time. His base beer of choice was Dos XX Amber.