Friday Cocktails: The Mr. Adams

Credit: Helen Rosner

While most alcoholic beverages have robust cocktail lives, mixing merrily with bitters, juices, sugars, and other boozes in an infinity of concatenations, beer has managed to stay pretty much above the fray — with the exception of the occasional michelada. But at the New York City restaurant JoeDoe, cocktail whiz Jill Schuster runs a bar menu where beer factors into more than half of the drinks on offer. Often they share space in the glass with stronger spirits like tequila, vodka, or gin, but in the Mr. Adams — a drink Schulster developed for Sam Adams — the beer stands alone. That's because this drink calls for Infinium, Sam Adams's top-of-the-line Bavarian-style brew, which is rich, yeasty, fruity, and has a whopping 10.3 percent alcohol by volume (most beers have just 4 to 6). To balance out the beer's apricot-and-fresh-bread notes, Schulster experimented with adding depth and heat, ending up with a drink that takes its rich mahogany hue from a generous pour of black pepper simple syrup, double-steeped for a dark black color and a slow, fiery burn. With a dash of lemon juice for brightness and some apple cider to round out the sugars, the Mr. Adams is ready to go.

See the recipe for the Mr. Adams »