Suggestions for Beer for Cinco de Mayo

I suppose I should make a Vienna lager?

Just pee in a clear bottle, add a few extra drops of yellow food coloring, and force carbonate. Serve with a wedge of lime.

Probably.

Or you could get goofy on the style.  Add some peppa, some native ingredients…piloncillo?

Chicha?  Not really Mexican, per se, but Americans are easily fooled, and think everything south of the border is related to Cinco de Mayo. :wink:

I have been toying around with the idea of a “Mexi Lager” but made with Agave sugar and lime zest. Finally going to do it this year, but probably not by Cinco de Mayo.

I should mention that a couple of the brewclub members (and the pone hosting the party) have Mexican brides, so this won’t be an easy crowd to fool.

I perused the wiki on Mexican beer and seems some of the better commercial stuff is in the Vienna to Dunkel category.  I think I’ll brew one of those, and maybe a pilsner too.  I like the idea of making a cocktail of beer, lime juice, and chili powder.

make a great, clean pilsner lager and serve it with a lime - you now have outstanding mexican beer without the crappy mexican beer taste! ;D

A friend in the club has made a chips and salsa beer. One trick is to get the chips before they are fried, and mash them. Salsa went in secondary IIRC. It was like eating chips and salsa, flavor wise.

I think a vienna lager is very appropriate. A light pilsner also.

I’d go with vienna lager.

If you wanted to be more fanciful with your beer you could make a chile beer or one of the mole-style chocolate-chile beers.

+1  Maybe mash some masa harina or gelatinized ground corn tortillas with the malt for the light lager.

+1 Again.

You can also use the lager in chelada or a grasshopper (half frozen margarita, half beer).

Finally brewed a Vienna lager today, along the lines of the BCS recipe.  Work got in the way of brewing sooner.  I’ll brew a Mexican lager tomorrow afternoon.

Love my Mexican Lager. I’ll brew mine next month. WLP940 yeast is a must…

I have one that is lagering, split between 940 and 833. Will see next week which one is I like better.

I need to get cracking on a Vienna. We have three months. Texas Independence was last Saturday.

I was going to suggest a Maibock.

I brewed a Vienna Lager type beer that was on the low end of the stats for gravity and ibu’s, substituted corn meal (cereal mashed) for 20% of the pilsner malt, and fermented with WLP940 (Mexican Lager).

last year i made a “mexican-american maibock”. basically a malt liquor. 1.070 50/50 2 row/pilsner and 20%corn. added a touch of munich/carapils and for some reason that i dont remember some rye. dry-“hopped” with a roasted anaheim pepper. fermented with re-pitched bock lager yeast and fermented a little warmer(52) to get a few esters. sort of morphed it from daddy’s little helper. it wsa a good beer but if i brewed it again i’d shoot for more than the 33 ibu’s that it had. right to style but just a little too sweet to drink much of.

Honestly, I would make a blonde ale (we’re on edition IV now, FWIW). It’s popular as hell, even the BMC drinkers love it.  My other most popular beer is Elderberry Wheat, believe it or not. Again, the BMC drinkers seem to love it.

What yeast you use Al?

The pepper beer sounds good.

I made the Vienna lager and then made a light lager and for some reason I didn’t set the MrMalty calculator to lager and just pitched a vial of mexi-lager yeast in 3gal of wort.  I figure this one might just be a large starter for the next batch, I’m even debating whether to take it out of the 50F fermentor chamber and let it run hot to get it done faster.  Any hope for this beer being drinkable?