Is that a cocktail or a beer?
When I first heard that Adobe Creek Brewing had a painkiller-inspired IPA, I wondered for a moment if the brewer had dosed the beer with Ibuprofen or Motrin.
I guess I don’t drink enough cocktails. A Painkiller, the internet has since told me, is a mixed drink born in the 1970s in the British Virgin Islands at a drinking hole called the Soggy Dollar Bar. The drinks were so good at this beachfront venue that, according to legend, sailors without dinghies to row to shore would jump ship and swim instead. Their wallets would get soaked, and they paid with soggy bills — hence the bar’s name.
The favored house drink was a blend of pineapple and orange juice, coconut cream and rum. (The name is evidently a gesture toward the dubious notion of drinking in the morning to cure a hangover. Good luck with that.) Eventually, the recipe was emulated elsewhere, and the drink became associated with the Pusser’s rum brand, which trademarked the Pusser’s Painkiller.
Adobe Creek’s Painkiller
IPA, now on tap at the Novato brewery, was brewed with toasted coconut, pineapple, tangerine, Madagascar vanilla beans and lactose. The hops in the recipe, meanwhile, include Galaxy and Vic Secret, for a potent shot of citrus and pineapple, and Sabro, which is uniquely coconut-flavored. The base beer, explains owner and brewer Jonathan MacDonald, is a hazy IPA — a style already thick, creamy and fruity.
The same base recipe, in fact, is serving as a canvas for more cocktail-inspired brewing experiments. MacDonald has already made a Lava Flow hazy IPA, and he is planning to make a pina colada version of the beer.
Anderson Valley Brewing in Boonville has brewed a gose, a sour-style, with lemon peel, juniper berries, lemongrass, cucumber, salt and cinchona bark. The beer is called the G&T Gose, the reference being for gin and tonic.
Farther from home, brewers are making beers in the spirit of various fruit drinks, teas and boozy cocktails. New Belgium last year released Mural Agua Fresca Cerveza, an ode to the classic Mexican fruit drinks often sold by street vendors. Seattle’s Lucky Envelope Brewing offers a series of beers made in the mold of cocktails and tea drinks. Schlafly Brewing in St. Louis offers a Crafted Cocktail Collection of limited release beers, including beers inspired by the White Russian, Paloma and Painkiller cocktails.
Pipeworks Brewing in Chicago brews a White Russian tribute called Hey, Careful, Man, There’s a Beverage Here — a line drawn from “The
Big Lebowski,” in which Jeff Bridges’ character endlessly sips White Russians. The beer is an imperial stout whitened with milk and spiked with vanilla beans, coffee and cacao nibs (which is fancy talk for raw chocolate). Pipeworks’ Mojito Madness is made with mint, coconut and key lime juice.
Brewing has become a playground for innovation and an industry driven by competition. Everyone making and selling beer is trying to stand out and one-up their competitors, and cocktail beers are one more way of getting creative — sort of.
While the cultural references intertwined with so many of these cocktail beers are interesting and amusing (sometimes), the beers themselves aren’t especially groundbreaking. That’s because IPAs and other styles with citrus and tropical fruits added have been commonplace for years, and the cocktail influence just hones these recipes into more structured concoctions. The exception may be the White Russian-inspired beers, which (reportedly — I haven’t had one) have taken stouts to new and nauseating heights of sweetness and overbearing richness.
I suggest sticking with the fruity IPAs, and should you swing by Adobe Creek, wear a face mask and try the Painkiller — but if you have a hangover, just drink water.