Hong Kong highball bar recalls Prohibition-era Chicago mayor with boilermaker cocktail

Consumption of cocktails can be intended to signal sophistication. The dry martini, for example, suggests classic elegance – James Bond would wear a tuxedo to sip one. The boilermaker, not so much. Its connotations are more blue collar than white tie. But, given that the term can apply to an order for a shot of whiskey with a beer chaser, or simply to the act of pouring the spirit into the beer, does it even qualify as a cocktail? It’s a surprise therefore to find that it is one of the signature drinks of a new bar purporting to specialise in highballs. The ThirtySix Bar & Co, in Central, serves long drinks, mixed with a Japanese-inspired attention to detail and an emphasis on the quality of the spirits, which include many small-batch whiskies. Although highballs are the bar’s core speciality, owner Philippe Nguyen reasoned that to establish its credibility it also needed a few classic cocktails from other families of drinks, and its own twists on them. A version of the boilermaker was chosen to feature on its opening list. After a hard day’s work, the workers needed to relax, so whiskey, mostly bourbon, was strong enough, but because they had been sweating all day they also needed to replenish fluids, so they ordered beer for a chaser Philippe Nguyen The name “boilermaker” is widely thought to have been chosen in the 19th century in honour of the workers who built or operated steam locomotives in the early days of the American railroads, but it may have originated earlier on the other side of the Atlantic. That story traces the boilermaker back to an accident that befell a British inventor around the beginning of the 19th century. Richard Trevithick was famous for building some of the first steam engines intended to transport people. During early tests of a steam-powered road locomotive called the Puffing Devil, he is said to have left the vehicle unattended while taking a break for a meal washed down with beer and whiskey. The water in the overheated engine’s boiler boiled away, wrecking it. The beer-and-whiskey combination is said to have been named thereafter in honour of “the boilermaker”, Trevithick. Nguyen, however, is inclined to believe the American-railroad-worker version. “It dates back to around 1900. After a hard day’s work, the workers needed to relax, so whiskey, mostly bourbon, was strong enough, but because they had been sweating all day they also needed to replenish fluids, so they ordered beer for a chaser, or dropped the whiskey into the beer. You could have it either way,” he says. Whatever the reason for the name, we do know that in the United States in the years immediately before Prohibition (1920-1933), boilermakers were popular in the bars of Chicago, and Anton Cermak, (who went on to become the city’s mayor in 1931) was hard at work building up his haulage business. Cermak was born in what is now the Czech Republic, and although – as might be expected given his ancestry – he liked beer, he didn’t particularly care for bourbon or other American whiskies, preferring to drink it with a herbal bitters – now called Becherovka – from the land of his birth. Nguyen found out about Cermak while researching the background to Becherovka, which had been recommended to him by a Czech bartender friend. “He suggested a boilermaker combining beer and Becherovka instead of whiskey,” Nguyen says, “but I have to say, I didn’t like it, so we went back to the original idea with bourbon, but with the addition of the herbal liqueur, and then topped it with beer foam.” The cocktail is called B For Mayor’s Boilermaker in Cermak’s honour. Becherovka has been around since the early 19th century, and is part of the proud tradition of herbal bitters originally intended to treat stomach ailments but which eventually developed a following among those who simply liked the taste, and perhaps believed it was good for them. Owned today by French company Pernod Ricard, it was originally manufactured by the Becher family in the town of Carlsbad, to a recipe supplied by an English doctor named Christian Frobrig and, for much of its history, was sold as Becher’s Original Carlsbad English Bitter – confusingly, because in Britain “bitter”, as a singular noun, means a style of beer. Sadly, neither his mayoral status nor fondness for herbal bitters is Cermak’s main claim to fame. He is best known for having had the misfortune of standing between Franklin D. Roosevelt and his would-be assassin, Giuseppe Zangara, on February 15, 1933, and was one of five people to take the bullets intended for the US president. He was also one of two to die afterwards from their injuries. There are also unproven theories that Cermak was the intended target himself. According to the brand’s official history, Becherovka was not exported to the US until 1934, the year after Cermak died, but it seems likely that immigrants to America with family ties to the Carlsbad area would have been able to arrange for bottles to be shipped over, possibly even during Prohibition. And it would be a shame to spoil Nguyen’s story. The ThirtySix’s head bartender, Heidi Hou, explains that the idea behind B for Mayor’s Boilermaker was to create a refreshing drink in a single glass that delivered the traditional cocktail’s kick. After much experimentation, the formula settled on was Rebel Yell bourbon, a brand created in the 1900s, coincidentally, by the former mayor of another American city – Charles Farnsley, of Louisville, Kentucky. The reason for its selection, though, according to Hou, was its spicy notes, which combine well with the other constituents of the drink – home-made thyme syrup, Becherovka, fresh lemon juice and Brooklyn Lager beer foam. “It’s a bit herby, but refreshing,” says Hou. And it has turned out to be one of the bar’s most popular cocktails – with both women and men. If you prefer the American-railroad-worker/inebriated-British-inventor approach to a drink after work, a good place to find craft beer and whiskey in the shot-and-chaser format is Alvy’s, in Kennedy Town. On Staunton Street, Central, is a beer and whiskey bar actually called The Boilermaker. The extreme version of a boilermaker, called a depth charge, involves not only dropping a shot of spirit into the beer, but the shot glass with it. The wisdom of this practice is open to question.

Hong Kong highball bar recalls Prohibition-era Chicago mayor with boilermaker cocktail

.css-1mniedq{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;} The ThirtySix Bar & Co’s version of the whiskey and beer drink pays tribute to Anton Cermak Cermak is famous for being killed by a bullet intended for US president Franklin D. Roosevelt

The ThirtySix Bar & Co’s version of the whiskey and beer drink pays tribute to Anton Cermak

Cermak is famous for being killed by a bullet intended for US president Franklin D. Roosevelt