Hear Me Out: The Boilermaker Is the Perfect Bar Order

There are nights when you walk into the local bar, glance up at the confounding list of hazy IPAs and pastry stouts, or the 10th negroni riff of the week, and the proper course of action suddenly just becomes crystal clear. We’re talking about the best of all respites from the tyranny of “what’s hot, what’s new?” in the beverage alcohol world. We’re talking about the humble–but revered by those in the know–boilermaker. Whether you refer to it by that term, or simply as a “beer and a shot,” or any of its innumerable variations around the world, the boilermaker is a drink order that will always and forever possess a certain, understated je ne sais quoi. And if anything, it feels like an order that has become more popular than ever in recent years, elevated and enshrined in the very upscale cocktail establishments that once would have seen ordering a boilermaker as gauche. We might well be living during the golden era of “beer and a shot,” right now.

But at the same time, truly defining a boilermaker in the first place can be a little bit difficult. One can say, “Well, it’s a beer and a shot of whiskey,” but what beer and what whiskey? Does it even need to be whiskey? Should the two be mixed, or consumed separately? Does it really matter, or did it ever matter? There’s not even a concrete story for why we in the U.S. refer to this drink as a “boilermaker,” although it’s typically assumed that the name reflects the drink’s blue collar, working class tradesman roots. A publication like The Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink traces it back to at least the 1890s in Montana, where Irish barkeeps referred to the drink as the “Sean O’Farrell,” whereas The Joy of Mixology says the drink was prized among the steelworkers of western Pennsylvania, which certainly feels thematically on point. That state of Pennsylvania, our modern election bellwether, is tied to the boilermaker like few others–particularly Philadelphia, which has its own beloved regional variant, known as the Citywide Special. That can of PBR and shot of Jim Beam Bourbon can typically be had for less than $5 in Philly dives, even to this day.

But the boilermaker isn’t a “Philly thing,” or even a U.S. thing. It’s a classic of international drinking culture, a seeming human tendency wherever both beer and distilled spirits are sold to find some kind of pleasing aesthetic combination. In Germany, it’s Herrengedeck, a beer typically served with a shot of Korn, the unaged grain-based equivalent to German moonshine. In the Netherlands it’s Kopstootje, which naturally subs in jenever with your brew. In Sweden, they have a version with the ubiquitous Jägermeister, whereas in Korea it’s soju. Some are ultra-regional, as in certain U.S. variations like Illinois’ mildly infamous Chicago Handshake, a combination of Old Style beer and Jeppson’s Malört, a powerfully bitter and herbal wormwood digestif that one never forgets after sampling for the first time. Anywhere such a boilermaker is served, it tends to be a basic, unpretentious order popular among the type of salt-of-the-earth folks who prize local community and keep tavern culture alive.

And yet, the boilermaker also seems to be evolving, working its way into places where it may never have really been welcome before. Upscale cocktail bars tinker with them and add them to menus, noting that no one ever said this needs to be basic lager and well whiskey–although I think there will always be a certain understated charm to the universal nature of that easily accessible, dirt cheap variation. But at restaurants and cocktail hubs, you’ll oftentimes find new and creative boilermarkers, because bartenders and industry folk seem to love them. And they’re likely to experiment with novel combinations involving their favorite craft beer styles, coupled with everything from alpine amaro to absinthe. Who knows? The “____ + _____” format makes for endless permutations of all the drinks you can collide together in this way. They’re all welcome under the boilermaker’s big tent.

Appreciation for the boilermaker must begin with an acknowledgement that there’s an acceptable, adult context for drinking “a shot” of liquor, outside of a drunken frat party.

Perhaps it has been the American whiskey boom and obsession that helped to push the shot-and-beer pairing in the direction of wider respectability, a gradual normalization of the idea of consuming neat spirits outside the context of bachelorette parties and stag nights “doing shots” in the most obnoxious and disruptive manner imaginable. Don’t get me wrong–the boilermaker can be a very effective avenue to intoxication if you want it to be, but it can also be consumed in the context of relative moderation–a “one and done” type drink order that saves you from having to get a bartender’s attention multiple times on a busy night. For that reason, it’s always been a favorite bar order of mine before an event where I won’t be drinking–like say, before a movie or a concert. You get your tipple, and then a few hours to recover. It’s just enough, without feeling like you’ve gone totally overboard.

More than that, there’s a sense of ritual to the boilermaker that I never fail to appreciate, a certain earnest acknowledgement of our human relationship with alcohol, stretching back centuries. There are times as a drink writer when I’m sampling modern craft cocktails and mixology, and see those drinks seemingly attempt to remove themselves far beyond the acknowledgement of ethanol as one of the primary draws of drinking. It is true that we drink for novel flavor experiences, and I would expect any drink writer to make that argument, but at the end of the day we also drink because of the pleasure of some modest–or not so modest–level of intoxication. There’s no getting around it, or hiding it behind the guise of epicureanism. And the boilermaker invites you to affirm and think about that, because there’s no subterfuge to it, no way to spin the classic “beer and a shot” as anything other than the occasional unhealthy luxury, like eating a big slice of cake. They don’t tend to be works of art, like a $20 cocktail at a swanky downtown bar. They’re a means to an end, proudly embraced by drinkers who are comfortable in admitting exactly what they’re doing.

And that’s why I love the boilermaker, a term that can describe a thousand different drinks, made a thousand different ways, from the most humble and dirt cheap version to a duo of flavors that have literally never been brought together before. The one constant: They’re better together than they are apart. That’s what the boilermaker is all about.

Jim Vorel is a Paste staff writer and resident beer and liquor geek. You can follow him on Twitter for more drink writing.