Summer Cocktails Gone Wild
When it gets this hot, sometimes a simple G&T or a frosty beer just isn’t enough. Fortunately, we’ve been amping up our cocktail repertoire all summer. Here are our seven favorite new-school summer cocktails.
1. Avocado Margarita
A tequila-heavy margarita is always refreshing, but even more so with a fresh avocado mixed in, a la this cocktail from Kim Haasarud’s 101 Mojitos and other Muddled Drinks.
Recipe: avocado margarita
2. The New Moscow Mule
We’re big fans of this ginger beer-based cocktail, but guess what’s even better? Ginger, and beer. Brennan Adams, the beverage director at El Centro, D.F. in Washington, D.C., makes this new take on the Mule, mixing ginger-chili simple syrup with vodka and lager.
Recipe: the new moscow mule
3. The Gringo
Remember drinking Mexican boilermakers—a shot of tequila dropped in a pint of beer—in college? OK fine, if you did that you probably don’t remember it. Red Star Tavern in Portland, Oregon has a refined take on tequila+beer. Their Gringo cocktail mixes silver tequila, St. Germain, grapefruit juice and pale ale.
Recipe: The Gringo
4. The Summer Blood and Sand
Our take on this classic whiskey-and-OJ cocktails lightens things up for summer with club soda and POM juice poured over Glenlivet Scotch.
Recipe: the summer blood and sand
5. Dark Beer Float
Problem: you love drinking dark beers, but they just don’t seem appropriate for 85-degree summer days.
Solution: Add ice cream, as in this beer float, made from Barrier Lights Out Stout and Steve’s vanilla bourbon ice cream, Spotted at 61 Local in Brooklyn.
6. Guinness ‘n’ Gin
Solution #2 for how to drink dark beer in summer: mix it with gin! The Black Friar’s Pint at The Fifth Floor in San Francisco has Plymouth Gin, Cardamom Spiced Guinness and East India Sherry shaken with egg white and Angostura bitters.
7. The Velvet Pith
Every cocktail bar in America now seems to have a thick-thick egg white cocktail on the menu, but Bourbon Steak in D.C. offers this one that we actually like to drink in summer: cointreau, whipped egg whites, freshly grated nutmeg and fresh basil.
See more cocktails from Bourbon Steak.
