Cinco de Mayo Tip: Forget the Margarita, Drink a Michelada

Spicy beer-based cocktail is an age-old Mexican hangover cure.

May 5, 2017 5:00 am
Your New Go-To Happy Hour Drink Should Be the Michelada
(Sarah Dea/Toronto Star via Getty Images)

It’s the perfect drink for Cinco de Mayo—not to mention the rest of outdoor-bar season.

It’s really easy to get stuck on a go-to happy hour drink: the Old Fashioned, G&T, or the Americano (our personal favorite; in the James Bond novels, that’s the first cocktail Bond imbibes, not that vodka martini swill from the movies).

But with summer quickly approaching and outdoor bars unfurling their awnings once again, it’s high time for a change. And as GQ notes, that change should come in the form of the Michelada—an age-old Mexican hangover cure.

Listing  off its ingredients (see below), the Michelada doesn’t sound all that appealing, but per the publication, they combine nicely. “A great Michelada is acidic, and it’s balanced, and it has that perfect undercurrent of heat, and it packs the highest level of flavor-per-sip that’s physically possible,” writes GQ‘s Josh Scherer.

While GQ has its own recipe (that includes Vietnamese fish sauce!), we thought Liquor.com‘s was a little bit more appealing for the first-timer. Take a look.

Ingredients
Salt
Cayenne pepper
.5 oz Lime juice
2 drops Tabasco Sauce
2 dashes Worcestershire sauce
1 pinch Ground black pepper
1 pinch Celery salt
Mexican lager beer (such as Tecate, chilled)

Preparation

-Rub the lime wedge along half the rim of the pint glass and dip into a mix of equal parts salt and cayenne pepper.

-Add the remaining ingredients except the beer.

-Fill with beer and garnish with a fresh lime wedge.

Watch another GQer make one below.

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