Michelada
Prep time:
Light beer with lime, Worcestershire, Maggi seasoning, hot sauce and a chilli-salt rim, over ice. It is Mexico’s definitive cerveza preparada, and it has no single recipe: it changes from region to region, and even the name means different things depending on where you order it.
Ingredients
- 355 ml light lager, ice-cold
- 30 ml freshly squeezed lime juice
- 2 dashes Worcestershire sauce
- 2 dashes Maggi seasoning
- Hot sauce to taste
- Salt and chilli powder for the rim
- Ice
Preparation
- Run a lime wedge round the rim of the glass and dip it in the salt mixed with chilli powder.
- Put the lime, Worcestershire, Maggi and hot sauce in the glass and mix them.
- Add ice and pour in the beer slowly, tilting the glass so the head does not rise.
- Stir once from the bottom and serve the rest of the beer alongside, to top up as you go.
Bartender’s notes
How is it different from a chelada?
In what goes into it, although the name depends on where you are. Broadly, a chelada is just beer with lime and salt, and a michelada adds the sauces and the heat. But across much of the country the names are swapped, and in some places the version with sauces is called a “cubana”. If you order one away from home, it is worth asking what you will get.
Does it take Clamato?
The classic one does not. With Clamato it becomes something else, thicker and saltier, which many places list by name — michelada con Clamato — and which has as many fans as the original. If you make it that way, use one part Clamato to three of beer and leave out the Maggi, because with the Clamato there is already salt to spare.
Related recipes
Paloma
The drink Mexicans actually order, far more than the Margarita. Tequila, grapefruit and salt: refreshing, light and hard to stop at one.
View recipe →
Ranch Water
Tequila, lime and sparkling water, in the bottle or in a highball. Nowhere to hide: with three ingredients, whatever tequila you use shows up in full.
View recipe →
Boulevardier
Bourbon, Campari and sweet vermouth, stirred and finished with orange peel. It is the Negroni with whiskey instead of gin, and the change goes beyond the name: it comes out rounder, sweeter and longer on the palate, more an after-dinner drink than an aperitivo.
View recipe →