16 May Beer Cocktail Week: Stout Sangaree Cocktail Recipe

Stout Sangaree Cocktail Recipe

This week, we’re applying our mixing skills to beer. We know we’re sledding uphill. Most people prefer their beer taken unmixed, and many beer mixed drinks are an acquired taste. But give us a chance. People have been mixing beer in drinks for a very, very long time–long before cocktails as we know them existed. And some of the things they came up with are quite refreshing and delicious.

Today’s recipe is not quite so old as yesterday’s, which was a staple of colonial times. It’s still pretty old, though. We know for sure that the American colonies were drinking sangarees just prior to the Revolution (Wondrich, Imbibe), maybe even earlier. The Waldorf-Astoria Bar Book does sangarees the courtesy of describing them as a slightly different class of drink (made without citrus), but I think it’s far more likely that sangaree is just ye olde tyme spelling and pronunciation for ‘sangria.’ If the earliest sangrias didn’t have citrus, it’s probably just because it hadn’t occurred to anyone to try yet.

As you might imagine from your knowledge of what we know as sangria, sangarees mostly had a wine or fortified wine base. The truly creative types, though, used beer too. Some genius, whose recipe was captured by Mittie Hellmich, decided to do both. It’s luscious.

Stout Sangaree Recipe

Ingredients

• 2 oz ruby port
• 2 tsp simple syrup
• 12 oz stout
• pinch of ground nutmeg
• pinch of cround cinnamon

Instructions

• Pour simple syrup into a pint glass.
• Add stout.
• Float the port on top.
• Sprinkle with nutmeg and cinnamon.