I know. I KNOW. It’s been a while. The past couple of months have been a whirlwind of travel, more travel, and me somehow finding time for 4 of the 50 Best Bars in North America 2023 edition (PCH, Youngblood, Thunderbolt, and Death & Co (LA) if you are keeping score at home). Which reminds me I really need to get in a Mexico City trip one of these days. But enough travel, this is about being home and making drinks here, so when I’m on my next career or whatever, I can have a bar you aspire to go to.
Exhausting as it has been to be many places, it’s refreshing to see what other folks are doing elsewhere up and down the coast of California (and occasionally inland), and even further afield in Minneapolis and Saint Paul, though that trip was packed tight and I did not have time for many of the better cocktail spots (It was a CC kinda trip, you know?)
When I was in San Diego, I had a Green Flash for the first time in a while. I have a soft spot for that era of craft beer in my heart, and it’s a great West Coast IPA. Which is refreshing in our current world of “why is every goddamn hopped beer hazy now?” (beer trends, like many things, do until they overdo it until you revolt).
Now experimenting with beer in cocktails is a delicate thing. At best, they are done simply (think a Spaghett or a Michelada), a beer and maybe one or two other things. And there are some interesting cocktails that utilize beer as an ingredient (in the place of bubbly water, for example, a crushable beer can work quite well in some drinks). However I was thinking a different direction as I sipped on my beer. What about IPA syrup?
It’s nothing fancy, equal parts beer and sugar that you reduce. I heated the beer a bit first to get things going and otherwise processed it like any other simple I make (fill the bottle, mix and shake a lot). If I were fancy, I might add a touch of citric acid, but I haven’t gotten quite that fancy yet (though I did get Tropical Standard recently, so shit might get weird around here for a bit).
So…what the hell do I do with this? The beer that initially gave me the inspiration points the way, though sadly I could not find Green Flash anywhere in my neighborhood. But really any old West Coast IPA should do the trick, so I pulled a bottle out of the fridge. This is ideal for an IPA that’s maybe a bit past its freshness date if you are looking to select a bottle.
This is just a riff on a Chartreuse Swizzle, subbing the falernum for the IPA syrup. So…
1.5 oz Chartreuse (I know, I know it’s so expensive now)
1 oz fresh pineapple juice
.75 oz lime juice
.5 oz IPA Syrup
Viola! If I had a flash blender, I’d use that, but I got a good shaking arm, so it’s not a problem. Best garnished with mint like the original. Let’s, in honor both the Chartreuse and the IPA that inspired me to try this little variation, call it a Green Flash.
This is Trader Jane’s, a periodic newsletter about drinks (mostly tiki) and other fun writing. Follow me on Substack for something every couple of weeks (a low volume Substack, I swear!), and follow me on Twitter and Instagram for more timely updates on my beverages (and for lots of other things of course!)
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