For better or worse, I’ve started seeing a lot more beer cocktails showing up on menus. These range from your garden variety Shandies and Radlers (which are also increasingly common packaged straight from the breweries) to Lovecraftian nightmares involving chimichurri and habenero puree (not even joking).

For me, a beer cocktail (at best) can pretty much only salvage a mediocre beer or ruin a good one.  This is Good News(tm) if a local treasured eatery only serves beer that you’re not crazy about.

Beer Syndicate Blog has a brief write-up on a few common beer cocktails if you’re feeling adventurous with those left-over macrobrews in the fridge.  This one kind of blew my mind:

Homemade Diesel: Diesel is the name of a popular mixed drink in Germany which is simply a blend of beer and cola at a ratio of about 1 to 1. After adding cola to a light beer the resulting color kind of looks like, you got it, diesel.

I did try this once… So much nope. Nope on a rope.  But I’ve had tomato sauce based beer cocktails and plenty with muddled berries that I didn’t hate.