Friday Happy Hour

In Nebraska, it is illegal to mix beer and hard liquor. Drinks such as the Irish Car Bomb (take a pint of Guinness, drink an Irish-sized swallow, then fill the space in the glass with Baileys and whiskey and enjoy at your leisure) are therefore the order of the day.

In a nod to the Midwest, may we suggest a Boilermaker: Whiskey, in a glass, plus beer, in a glass. Drink one, then the other. Or, depth-charge the shot of whiskey into the pint, which gives the drink a sloppy frat party feel as the shotglass in your pint falls into your face as you gulp down your extra-strong beer. That is actually the part of the drink that makes it illegal in Nebraska, so do it at least once for liberty's sake. As far as specific ingredients, nobody really cares, although we believe the whiskey and the beer should be the same color. That is to say, cheap on both counts.

We did a little research for you, dear reader, to see if we could figure out how the name Boilermaker got associated with such a simple drink. According to David Wondrich at Esquire's Drinking Database, "boilermaker" is slang for any industrial metal worker and may have been linked to the drink from the phrase, "a boilermaker and his helper." The drink does represent a crude-but-does-the-job mentality: You can't screw it up, and it gets you drunk. Fast. Another name for the drink is "Block and Fall," referring to the fact that after two of them, you'll walk about a block and fall.