Michelada

Ingredients

  • 355ml Beer (lager)
  • 120ml Clamato
  • 15ml lime juice
  • 2 dashes Tabasco or Valentina
  • 2 dashes Worcestershire sauce
  • 2 dashes Maggi Seasoning or soy sauce
  • pinch of salt
  • freshly grated pepper
No. of Servings:
1

Garnish

Salt rim and lime wedge

Instructions

  1. Add salt to a flat surface.

  2. Use a lime wedge to rub the rim of a pint glass.

  3. Dip the glass on the salt.

  4. Add all ingredients except for the beer into a shaker with ice.

  5. Roll the mixture until chilled.

  6. Strain into the glass, and add ice.

  7. Pour the beer.

  8. Stir gently.

  9. Garnish with a lime wedge.

Hints

  1. Rolling involves pouring the mixture from one vessel into another, multiple times. You can use a julep strainer in one vessel to prevent the ice from splashing the mixture.

  2. Make sure to taste your Michelada before serving it - this is a cocktail that requires a little finesse to adjust it to your palate, or your mood.

  3. Feel free to experiment with other spices to truly make this your own. For instance, you can add cayenne pepper, or replace the Tabasco for your favorite hot sauce. It's also common to add some Chamoy sauce, if it's available to you.

  4. Micheladas are usually made with a light lager (if Mexican lagers are available to you, that's a plus!). The recipe should still work with other types of beer, but your mileage may vary.

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Trivia

  1. A variation of a Chelada.

  2. While the origins of such cocktail are hard to trace, it is generally agreed that Cheladas come from México, and started showing up in bars sometime in the 1950s. It's likely that its invention is tied to the introduction of fridges and coolers, which became more widely available in México during that time.

  3. The origins of the word are debated, but one possible explanation could be tied to the mayan word for blue: Chel. In México, this word was associated with white people due to their eye color, and eventually, as white people generally had blond hair, it morphed into a word to describe someone with a fair complexion- Chelo or Chela (male and female, respectively).

  4. Chela is a word that, to this day, is used as jargon for beer in many Latin American countries. This is possibly due to the fact that some beers are described as "blonde". It could also be tied to marketing, where in some instances said beers were touted as "the blonde that everybody wants".

  5. Assuming that Chela was a word that already existed in the lexicon, it's not hard to then make the jump to Chelada, which would be describing a Chilled Beer (Cerveza Helada, which becomes Chela Helada, and then shortened to Chelada). Note that prior to this time, beer was generally drunk at room temperature, so it makes sense that we are specifically calling out for a chilled beer!

  6. Micheladas, in turn, could be named so either because it's a Chelada made "my way" so Mi Chela Helada (My Chilled Beer), or it could also be because we're adding a mix of tomato juice or Clamato and spices, so it'd be a Chelada con mix, or Mixchelada, and eventually... Michelada.