Sprout & Pea

I’ve never been much of a beer drinker (don’t judge me, Brook­lyn), but last sum­mer, an intro­duc­tion to Micheladas com­pletely changed my opin­ion of the bub­bly, golden bev­er­age. I’m a big fan of savory cock­tails, so I cer­tainly wasn’t going to turn down any drink with soy sauce added to it– even if it was being added to a liq­uid that often caused my face to resem­ble that of some­one who had just eaten a whole lemon. Alas, one sip of this Mex­i­can clas­sic and I was sold. I spent many evenings last year (after work­ing for it with a long bike ride) enjoy­ing what slight sum­mer breezes we have here in Brook­lyn and sip­ping my new favorite drink. Even­tu­ally, win­ter came along and my palette shifted to red wine crav­ings, so I was thrilled a few weeks ago on a trip to the Florida Keys, to be rein­tro­duced to the Michelada with one of the best vari­a­tions on it that I have ever tasted. After kayak­ing 18 miles and camp­ing out on our own pri­vate island, we decided to take a lit­tle break (since camp­ing on your own pri­vate island is hard work) at a local Mex­i­can hole in the wall. This is where I dis­cov­ered a Michelada made with orange juice and some secret ingre­di­ents that gave it the best kick and tang I had ever come across. Unfor­tu­nately, the wait­ress wouldn’t share their secret, but based on the color and taste, I’m con­vinced that the “orange juice” must have been some­thing more sim­i­lar to orange Tang.

Tangy Michelada

Camp­ing on North Nest Key

With that in mind, I when I arrived back in rainy New York, I decided to keep the sum­mer feel­ing going with my slightly health­ier take on the Michelada using Bragg Liq­uid Aminos. I’m mak­ing it my goal this sum­mer to try Michelada’s wher­ever I can find them and to taste the many dif­fer­ent takes on what I con­sider to be the per­fect sum­mer drink. You may also be happy to learn that since my intro­duc­tion to Michelada’s and after a few fan­tas­tic flight tast­ings, I have learned a bit more about beer and can now be seen every once in a while with one in hand. Here’s the Michelada blend that I have come up with…

1 can or bot­tle of beer (non-​​dark beers are best)
1/​2 tbsp Bragg Liq­uid Aminos (or soy sauce)
1 tsp Worces­ter­shire Sauce
Juice of 1/​2 lemon
Juice of 1 small lime
A few dashes of Tabasco Sauce
1/​2 tsp. Gar­lic Pep­per
To sea­son the rim of the glass, I com­bine a lit­tle salt with gar­lic pep­per, Adobo and paprika.

Place rim sea­son­ings on a small plate, wet the rim of the glass and dip into sea­son­ings. Pour beer into a glass, add remain­ing ingre­di­ents, stir and serve cold.