So we've got mango, pineapple, and orange, watermelon. Then there's lime from Modelo Shiner, Cruz Blanca, Half Acre. There's these two. Oh, and then there's lime from Dos Equis. These are all tomato ones in addition to the bud. So four tomato ones, five lime, four fruit, and then I have mix. What the hell do you think you're doing trying to one up me? Then we can... This is fighting words. Next Spirit's Podcast, you're going to be in the thick of it, my friend. Then we can make our own. And I think this also has the potential to have a further podcast where during the summer, we all make our own and then we come back and do like a Chelada off. Maybe you're not most passionate about this is what I am. You're listening to Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast, and today we are going to talk about the summer craze that is coming. I guarantee this is going to be the summer of the Chelada. What happened to Ranch Water? What the hell? It's come and gone. It's gone. Really? Nobody cares about it already. It left almost as fast as Long Drink. Oh my God. You know, Ranch Water is still here and, you know, there are few people are interested in them. The Ranch Water that don't use actual tequila, I think are legitimately just being overstepped by these Chelada beers. So it's kind of a little point of clarification here. First of all, there's no agreed even the etymology of Michelada isn't even agreed upon. And now a lot of people are calling beers that are seasoned or flavored Cheladas. And then if it has a tomato component, especially tomato and clam via our famous Clamado cocktail, they'll call that a Michelada. But what's really exploding in popularity are Cheladas, which at their simplest are lime, salt and beer. And if you were to order that in a bar, you might get it dressed. Dressed beers are a thing right now. So what we're going to do today is we're going to taste through a whole bunch of Cheladas and a whole bunch of Micheladas. That's an understatement. Yeah, there's a lot of Chelada here. And then we're going to make some, which is obviously labor intensive. First, we're going to use a mix. Then we're going to make one from scratch. So we'll have the Brophy approach easy. We'll have the Chris approach pain in the ass. We'll meet somewhere in the middle and see what we think. But more importantly, you have the Brophy quantity, correct? Yes. Joined here with me today. Someday he'll get that right. Hey, I'm Pat from the Spirits Department. I'm Jenna with Communications. I'm Chris. I do booze related stuff. All right. Mucho Chelada. This episode is where Roger complains about artificial fruit flavors for an hour and a half, while the rest of us slowly get drunk. Can we do the second part quickly? Yeah. This very much is going to be my soapbox of, is it really that hard to cut a lime up? You can't bring a knife to the beach, even though you're not supposed to bring alcohol either. That always cracks me up. These are perfect for the beach. What beach are you drinking at? I've never gone to the beach without any of those two things. I'm the guy who walks onto the beach and immediately is like, hey, what's in that cooler? I'm trying to drink on this beach? That's illegal. Let me give you a ticket just for looking at you. Someday we'll be invited to Roger's backyard pool and we'll all show up with coolers and he's going to yell at us that we're not allowed to drink there. No drinking pool sign. All right, so I really dug deep here and found almost literally Brophy style. Every single one that I could find, there's a couple things that are not really readily available at many stores, but I've put together a selection of Cheladas and Micheladas that are pretty readily available. What kind of spurred a lot of this is the Modelo Cheladas are on fire. I mean, people are losing their minds over these things. Most importantly, the Limón y Sal, the lime and salt one, and then this one, Sandia Picante. Spicy watermelon? Wow. Yeah. People are literally were selling boatloads of this stuff. There's a shortage of the watermelon one, so why don't we start with this one? Watermelons don't grow on trees, Roger. What do you think this says? Jackfruit? I got to bust out the jackfruit, juicy fruit reference in my rum class yesterday. I was teaching a rum staff training up in Vernon Hills, and somebody mentioned that some rum to them reminded them of juicy fruit, so I got to well actually Roger them. Well, that's amazing. Shockingly, they didn't speak up for the rest of the class. Well done. All right, this one's not bad. What's the next one? All right, so the first one here is... You gotta double spoon that Chamoy. Did you already get a spoon? All right, all right, sorry. Well, what I'm gonna make you do... The other one's gotta put a little tahini in it and snort it. Can I have a spoon? Oh, well, there you go. I knew I didn't give one to someone. You already snorted tahini out of that one. You know, here's where I go on my diatribe about if you can... See, I just needed two ounces of Modelo and everything's fine. And a golden tahini. If you're somewhere with like a countertop and a knife, you should be cutting up lime. But what we're going to taste through here is the convenience of breweries are going to add the lime in the cell for you and that's going to produce mixed results. So this first one is the Modelo that again, selling like crazy. It's 3.0... It's Limone Cell. Is that right? It's 3.5% ABV, so it's also a low alcohol option. Because it's low alcohol, it's also pretty low cal, it's 120 calories. All they say on this is that it's a natural lime flavor. Quite salty. To me, this tastes like margarita mix. Yes. Yeah. It's even like relatively low carb or low carbonation, not carbohydrate, but. I don't know. It's not real lime is what I'm getting at. I also brought since I lambasted so much, some real lime. Real limes as well as the product real lime. So I'm going to pass this around just so you can do a little test. I gave you all a wedge of an actual lime, and then here's your little bottle of real lime. And I doubt you've ever really sat around and tasted real lime, the product. So I want you to try it. Is the wedge of lime going to taste the same if it hasn't been squeezed by your paws though? No, because in all these lime things that we're going to taste, I think that's what you're always kind of battling with is that if it's something that's going to go into the beer, it's got to be introduced at some point, where it gets processed to some degree. So it really depends on how you're introducing it. So if you're using lime flavorings. The actual lime is so much more citric and acidic than this real lime juice. Yeah. I mean, this real lime or whatever the colon in it. Right. The real lime tastes just like citric acid and ascorbic acid like if you're chewed on a vitamin C pill. Yeah. It tastes, it has that flavor. Yep. I agree. And the real lime meaning the lime in the plastic bottle. The fake lime. The fake lime. The real lime meaning the fake lime. We will call the actual lime, actual lime. Real lime and actual lime. Yeah. So very interesting here. The next one is Dosecki's. Dosecki's lime and salt is 4.2% ABV and 135 calories. Again, this kind of just says natural flavors, but color-wise, taste-wise, smell. It looks more like a beer. It does. Whereas the Modelo lime and salt looked like cloudy lime, uncarbonated lime juice, this looks like it's holding ahead. It looks like a beer. This is not nearly as salty, number one. The lime comes across as more floral. It's barely there too. It's like driving past an orchard of lime trees. Yeah, exactly. It's not real acidic. It's just a light beer that's been farted on with lime flavor. It's barely there. They crop dusted it as they walked by with lime floral essence. We need to bring farts into this. Because Greg's not here. It's nuanced, whereas the first one reminds me of lime popsicles, limeade, which is probably why people love it, is that it reminds them of stuff like that, stuff when they were a kid, really limey stuff, whereas that one's more nuanced. Coming up next is kind of a sea salt and lime that's been around for quite some time. This is from our friends down in Shiner, Texas. Opening a distillery down there. Shiner is a very sleeper brewery. These guys make some very approachable, well-made beer, no flaws, it's affordable. I've always been a big supporter of Shiner, and I think this one's pretty dialed in. Shout out to Tom in the beer office. He's always been a fan of the citrusy Shiner beers and of Cheladas for that matter. Way back in the day, he was saying we should do a podcast on this. So Tom, we finally got to it about five years later, just in time for it to be the summer of Chelada. It's the late spring of Chelada. It's going to be over by summer. So this one is made with real lime peels and sea salt. I'd say it's the tangiest of the bunch. I think the Dos Equis is better. I get the lime peel, but this is another one that's just barely sprinkled with flavor. It got salt bay salted with a little bit of flavor essence and that's it. Just one little grain off the elbow. Yeah. Little arm hair, a few grains. So then again, any of these. You could just picture Jenna doing it. You do have your blazer sleeves rolled up. Perfect salt bay fashion. For time's sake, I didn't bother to suggest this because there's so many to get through, but you could dress any of these beers, which is essentially putting some sort of- I can barely dress myself. Come on. I usually don't start addressing my beers until I'm several in. Yeah. Hello, sir. You look tasty. These are big on social. I'm sure Jim and Jenna have seen this where they have these really sloppy cans that are dripping with chamoy hot sauce and then coated in a bunch of tahini. That's how they're served at Big Star and stuff. That's the only Chelada's ever had have been those at some hipster bar where the chamoy is running down the sides of the can. They're covered in tahini and they have a big lime wedge in. Right. That's an added thing. I figure that if half of the point of these is so you don't have to have anything on hand, so I'm not really going to suggest that. But if you go and buy these, definitely try that either take a glass out, coat it with lime juice or chamoy and then dip it in some tahini and try all these beers that way. I just take the can and dunk my hand and wrist deep. It's messy, so you got to be willing to do that. But all right. The Shiner is pretty good though. I mean, this is a nice summer session beer. It has the most beer identity so far, I would say. Cruz Blanca is a local brewery here in Chicago, which has a Mexican influence kind of focus to their beer. Their main beer is called Mexico Calling. It's a Mexican lager. And Cruz Blanca, they make great beer at that brew pub, and then they utilize Great Central to be able to produce. It's a tiny space where they're at, so they use Great Central to make beer to ship out to market. And Great Central makes great beer. Their big innovation this year, again, they're betting hard on that, you know, Cheladas are just going to keep picking up and picking up the more people learn about them and taste them and get the differences. They released this Chelada that has lime and salt in it. So on this one, we're looking at 5% ABV for what it's worth. This one, and with any of them really, they suggest if you want, you can add some tequila to it as well. So that again is another option with any of these. If you want to put a splash or a whole shot of tequila in it, go for it. I think this has the best lime aroma. Yeah, it reminds me of the- I think it smells like a locker room. What? I think it's got this stank to it. It's that salty sweat smell. Yeah, it's right on you of, yeah, when you get a salt ring on your shirt. It's not the first thing, but it's deep in there once you're really sucking in that aroma. I get that too, but I think the lime that rides on top is the most authentically limey thing. I don't disagree with that. I think that this one tastes the most like the real lime product. This definitely tastes like a beer if you put some real lime in it instead of squeezing an actual lime. Yeah. You're right on the palate. It comes across that way for sure. Yeah. It has that kind of beer mixed with lime 80 flavor. It's not bad. There's a set that's streak of lime runs straight down the middle of your tongue. It's interesting. It's all right. Also in Chicago, also betting big on that lime beers are the next big thing. Half Acre released a beer called Green Torch, which has this snake tattoo-esque logo on it. Their play on this was that a lot of half acre beers are higher alcohol. I guess one of the ideas behind this is that it's a call out for a low ABV option from them. But I think more than anything else, they're obviously trying to capitalize on that. There's a whole bunch of these as seen by us tasting through all these. See, this one I get a weird locker room funk. I didn't get it on the last one as much, but now I see what you're talking about. See, I don't get it on this one. I don't get much lime here. No. Oh, it's on the palate. It's like juicy. It's like fleshy lime. Yeah. I like this. This I like. This is really good. This is the best one we've had so far. I'm getting it on the finish now. Again, though, it's like not a tart lime. It's de-acidified lime if that was a thing. Exactly. Like lime blossom or lime leaf, you know. I always lambast breweries for this. You should be more transparent on your websites and your social channels, and you should give people a reason to believe, as they like to say, and how your beer stands out from the pack, because there are clearly a million of these. I think I heard they use key limes in this in some degree. Well, that would be a less acidic lime, right? No. No? I don't think so. I don't think so, but definitely the flavor is different than your typical Persian lime. Exactly. Not to influence your opinions, but this is my favorite of the bunch. This is Stone Buenaveza, and again, they workshopped this years ago, and this one has the most beer identity, so it doesn't come as much surprise that a brewery like Stone famous for their IPAs. This has the only perceivable hop character in my mind. Again, good on them. They actually share that they use hops in this. They use the Liberty hops. It's 4.7% ABV, so it's a little on the highest of the bunch, I believe. No, the Cruz was five. But this to me has the most beer character, the most hop character, and it uses real limes and it tastes like real limes, actual limes. Does it have salt? Yeah. I think it has the most discernible malt character too. Yeah. Yeah. I get a lot of malt right up front that kind of- This is really good. I think I like the half acre a little more, but this is really good. Yeah. I would put a half acre second to this, and I would say that if you are going to drink these dressed, there's an argument to be made that the beer is going to get completely lost with the other ones. I'm going to have to say that that has to be true because they're all pretty light and subtle. You put something spicy on that, it's just going to be like drinking water. I mean, arguably, the whole Corona in a lime thing is- Maybe the Jim Shortz smell is us and not the beer. Yeah, it stinks in here. Kind of a nod to that if you want to cover up the bad taste of a macro-y not so great beer, you can do that with this. But when you have a nice quality beer, like the base of this beer, I don't think you want to completely lose that. Again, if you're drinking this right out of the can, I think it's great. Then if you wanted to put some tahini or chamoy on it, I think you'd still taste some of the beer as well. Jenna, what do you think? It's very beer-y. Yeah, I like it, but I don't know what would pull me towards this, aside from just buying a regular lager and then adding salt and lime to my liking myself, because it's very, very subtle. It tastes very nice. It's a good beer at the end of the day. All right, you're ready to get weird? All right, this is we're moving on to other fruits. So we've got mango, chili, orange and watermelon. What's the vote for what you want to try first? And they're spicy. Let's try this orange. I was going to say, should we do orange, maybe orange and then pineapple? Is it like watermelon? I don't know. It doesn't matter. Yeah, they're all spicy. So let's go for it. So these are all from Modelo. I think we should try some custom blends here. Yeah, and there's that option too. So this is the, they have managed to evoke a fun childhood memory and it's working for me on this one. This tastes like Tang. Yeah, it's mucho Naranja. It smells like Tang. This is beer for astronauts, baby. What does picosa mean? A little spicy? A little spicy Naranja, picosa. It's not really spicy. I don't know. Google. Picante is spicy. Make it so. Oh, it's just salty Tang. It tastes dead on like salt with the internet. Gatorade. This is interesting. I could see why the people love this. Yeah. Other element of this that we didn't explore, I think it's going to be more important with the tomato ones, but people sometimes drink these over ice. I don't think you need ice on any of these. I think it would kind of water them down too much. Maybe like the Modelo Lime one since it's very lime 80. I could see putting that over ice, but this I think you could put over ice too. All right. Pineapple time. I'll be very surprised if I like this. I usually don't. Pineapple flavor reminds me of like that weird. This is such a bizarre memory, but the like topical anesthetic they give you at the dentist before they give you the shot of Novacaine is always pineapple-flavored, like pineapple dum-dum for me. You say pineapple dum-dum and this smells exactly like a pineapple dum-dum. This is pretty good. It's really sweet. This is the sweetest thing we've had by far. Not a lot of info on these. They're kind of, these are not natural. These are made with all sorts of. The salt comes out more in the pineapple. Well, the tang was pretty salty too. Tang was salty. I actually kind of dig this. Yeah, me too. Tastes like a pineapple dum-dum, like pineapple. Continuing our drink like you're 12 series. Now, is this a Victoria pineapple or? I mean, there really is some. It's a Castoria. This does kind of remind me of very overripe natural pineapple. I mean, it's not so artificially. Agreed. It tastes very ripe and there's maybe even a hint of carmeliness to it that makes me think of roasted. Greg's going to be so pissed he missed out on this episode. He would complain that none of these are spicy. The spice is subtle, which I think is good because we're just tasting a tiny bit. I'm getting more spice out of the pineapple. I'm just drinking spoonfuls of Chamoy to make up for it. Me too. I have literally gotten no spice off of these, but I just keep licking all the salt and everything on my plate right now. There's a little spice on it. We've got a ton of hot. We've got all sorts of options here. There's tons of Chamoy if you want to re-up. I've got Valentina as well. Oh, I've been trying to conserve. I didn't know if these were for a specific beer. There are a few for later if you want to dress stuff or you want to... I might actually just dress the cups for you guys. I'm just eating it off the plate. I'm really surprised. I'm endorsing the pineapple. Yeah, I really like this pineapple. Good job, Modelo. Kind of disturbingly natural pineapple character. Weird. So is the mango. This is weird. What is going on? Boy. Boy, I thought I was going to be deep in the ground before these two were impressed with fruit flavors coming out of a constellation. Mass market beer. I know. I'm floored. Especially when I tried the limes. Look at the color on the mango. It's beautiful. It smells great. It smells very refreshing. Get out of here. It tastes just like mango. Oh, and it's got a nice salt to it. Oh, that's good. Yeah. Why are these good? What's happening? Are our minds about to be blown by the watermelon that's on allocation? Roger, are these fruit flavors in a variety pack or are they sold separately? Variety pack and then- And they're sold separately. Some of them you can get in, well, the lime you can get in 12 packs and then the other ones I think you can just get these big cans. The mango. The party can. I'm just interested in the mango. Or also known as the train commuter can. See, I also think that they really dialed the salt in at the right level. Depending on where you live in the city, the bus commuter can. Anybody agree or disagree with that? Salt is dialed in perfectly on this. I absolutely agree with that. All of these have just enough salt that you're like, oh, wow, it's salty. But then it stops. It's just salty. It's not too salty and a couple of the craftier options we tried, they were a little too cautious on the salt I think. If you're going to tell me this beer has salt and fruit in it, make it taste like salt and fruit. And they did. And you know what else is, I have not been eating my accoutrement here, and there is a little spice tingle at the end of these. So this one, you think it's this one spicier or that it's just building as we try more? I don't know. I feel like I felt the same, just subtle tingle on my mid-tongue from both the pineapple and the mango. The mango is the first one I noticed a little bit of spice. Yeah, so these come in a variety pack. I am assuming they might change this up. They should probably get... Well, it's a real tough one here, what to kick out of this variety pack. But it's four flavors, so it's the orange, the mango, the lime and the pineapple. See orange, orange is out. See orange. If they weren't fit. Orange by far the weakest of the bunch so far. It's too tang-like. Yeah. Yeah, fair enough. And this is coming from a tang lover. I'm serious. I like tang. It is. Again, I said yes, bring back happy memories. They still make tang? I mean, they did one 12, 15 years ago. I don't know. That is not recent. Listen, everything's recent. Time is a construct of your mind, man. That's right, baby. As predicted, this is a Watermelon Jolly Rancher. Yeah, I was just going to say the same thing as soon as I smelled it. Yowza. I get it. I get what the people probably like drinking that, but- Once I actually tasted it, it's not my favorite and I don't know that I'd buy it, but it's not as sweet or overpowering with watermelon. I expected it to be based off of the nose. But it has that Jolly Rancher tang to it. It's not just sweet and there's acidity to it. I mean, if you like a watermelon Jolly Rancher, this tastes pretty good. Yeah. Also, false advertising with the Picante on the label on the cans, I don't get any spice. I got spice on this one too. This is gross. If you drink a lot of this thing. Never mind. I take back everything bad I said about the tang. Keep the tang in the variety pack, leave this to these giant gross cans. I like watermelon, but watermelon Jolly Rancher isn't. It's just its own thing and that's what this is. Yeah. I don't know. You know what this tastes like? If you filled the basket of a drip coffee maker with watermelon Jolly Ranchers and it just ran water through it and just created a watermelon Jolly Rancher water. It is pretty spot water. A Jolly Rancher simple syrup. But again, I would say here if you swish this around in your mouth, you really can get spice coming out of it. I want to keep the enamel on my teeth. I'm just telling you, you can get a fair amount of chili spice out of this one. Yeah. I'm not going to say it to Jenna. A little bit, yeah. It's pretty covered up by that cloying candied watermelon. I think if you drink 24 ounces of this, you'll feel a little bit of spiciness. I think if you consider drinking 24 ounces of this, you're not really caring what you're drinking. That's so true. I can't imagine drinking this one not over ice. Yeah. I agree. Or as the other ones. It needs to be watered. That syrupy character needs to be cut with some water. Yeah. It reminds me of my four loco days in college. Just how sweet it is. I just can't imagine drinking that whole giant can of that in just one go. Yeah. All right. So that brings us to the conclusion of the Chelada portion of today's podcast. When I first heard about Michelada, what I always heard of were the tomato-based ones, which I think are a little more common, but the more research I did on this, my biggest takeaway is that, and I've read a million cocktail books, I've made hundreds of different cocktails over my life. I've never seen a cocktail that's had more variants about how you make it and what you make it with than a Michelada. Followed closely by Mai Tai probably. I mean, no, this is insane. The variants, like even with a Mai Tai, there's certain components which everyone agrees have to be in it. This is like some of them don't have tomato, some of them don't have Worcestershire, some of them have Maggi seasoning, some of them have a Chamoy Rimra, some don't. The gift of the Maggi. Yeah, that's like a Knorr like Bollion Cubes. These two major companies, Knorr and Maggi, where these like- They make beef, people are putting beef seasoning in this? Kind of, it's like a very glutamate, rich umami kind of- Yeah, and it's in a sauce farm rather than a Bollion Cube. Than like a Bollion Cube, but- You've never seen Maggi sauce? Because it's Swiss, I think, right? Yeah. It's on the shelf in your local- It's a storied competition between Maggi and Knorr. It goes all the way back to the 19th century. But why did I ask? I mean, these are billion-dollar businesses with like their- It was like, explorers took the Bollion Cubes to the South Pole and like, they've been around forever. It was a whole thing, but we'll not get into that. But there's literally no agreed upon ingredients, whether or not you use Clamado, some of them use some sort of seafood- inspired tomato juice, some don't. Some use hot sauce, some use hot sauces you've heard of, other ones insist you use a Mexican-style hot sauce like Valentina or Tapatio or Cholula. So it was quite a rabbit hole going down and seeing how people make these. So we're going to try the pre-prepared can versions, which have been around for a while, especially the Bud Light one. As long as I've been in the business, the Bud ones have been around. Yeah, Bud was definitely first on the scene with this. They do have a Nuevo look as you can see on this can here. Vicky's, I'm excited to try this one. This one actually has Victoria as the base, which I always think is one of the better Mexican beer options. List Chamoy, which is a whole very interesting sauce condiment thing that has a very strange history. There's some Tamarind. I'm sure we'll hear all about it. It's too long. There's not enough time. Then there's the normal Modelo one as well. Then we're going to try the Michelada Love Mix, which is a you don't want to have to screw around and make your own, which usually involves four or five, six different ingredients. Then lastly, I will make one from scratch with Clamato. Well, I'm just going to say- Are you going to garnish it with pickled clams like Chris did with that bloody Caesar? Yeah. I forgot about that. I'm going to say that I listened to the revisit of Bourbon County the other day and it was quite a nice episode. But where's the freaking food? I want a cocteles de camarones or something. Yeah, I know. As you can see, this was a insane amount of work too. I don't care, Roger. I didn't have to do it. Yeah, right. I thought about that and the garnish game is strong. My proposition right here is that after we try all this, there's going to be a follow-up episode where we all do a Chelada challenge, where we all put together our own Michelada recipe and taste them all side by side. And that's where we can all bring our garnish game and do things like giant shrimp cocktail. And you can get really weird with it. Meats, chicken wings, pretty much the bloody game. And that's sort of worth mentioning that if you're a fan of Bloody Mary's, this is obviously a lower alcohol version. In a way, you could argue that there's a lot of similar overlap, a lot of similar ingredients. But there's also some things that are nice and different about it. And it's going to bring that beer body, the beer foam. I've never been for what it's worth, a bloody guy. So I don't really like Bloody Mary's, but I find these pretty interesting, especially you can dial in if you make them yourself, how much tomato you use. And like I said, when I was researching this, looking at recipes, some people don't put any tomato in. They use like a hot sauce, which may or may not have some of the hot sauces have a tomato element to them, but or just the hot sauce makes it look red. So you'd think there was tomato, but kind of a fascinating cocktail. And I think these are we're going to keep hearing about these. They're going to keep exploding in popularity. More and more people are going to try them and like them. There's a lot to like here. So let me open the first one. What are we going to start with? Well, I would say that maybe the Chelada. I'm just kidding. Yeah, it's worth also saying that the Modelo one, they call Chelada instead of Michelada, which is kind of interesting. Well, so does Bud Light though. All right. So these, some of these, like the Bud Light one I know on their website at least, they did recommend trying it over ice. So I don't know if you want to or not. I was just going to say, you're turning it upside down. I was wondering, I mean, you don't necessarily want to shake your beer, but how do they keep the tomato-y stuff in suspension if you don't? Right? It's funny. The Bud One addresses this and goes, do not shake, rotate gently to mix. Okay. That makes sense. I mean, I wouldn't, I think you'd be disappointed if you just opened and bored, right? Yeah. Right. The Modelo Chelada, first up. Modelo Chelada. Looks like tomato juice. 3.5 percent like the other Modelo Cheladas and a 24-ounce can. All of these are priced at $349. Regardless of brands, pretty funny how uniform the price point is. This just smells like Bloody Mary mix. I was going to say, it's very tomato-y smelling. It's carbonated tomato juice with a little salt. Yeah. It's weird because it doesn't have much body. But you expect like that. I mean, I'm a tomato guy, so I don't mind it, but where's the beer? I know. Where's the spice? To your point, it's tomato juice slash V8. How dare they label this a special? I'm not getting, again, go reviewing all these different ingredients that you can put in these. Some savory component in the form of Worcestershire, Maggi, soy sauce, sometimes you believe in use. I feel like there's none of that here. Right. It kind of tastes like if you took V8 and cut it in half with mineral water. Taste how much this tastes like just carbonated tomato juice. Yes. And nothing else. Where's the salt? Where's the beer? Are we in between products or not? Where's the Picante? Yeah. So we started with the Modelo Chelada right there. And it is just tomato juice. It's very weird. Yeah. Next. I'm going to say if you want, I'm going to give you all a ice cube maybe just to... Oh, pour it over ice? Yeah. They recommend it. So it's following the instructions. Oh, really? They do. Yeah. Oh, for the Modelo or the Bud Light? Bud Light. Oh. Oh, OK. Bud Light. I'm not going to lie, the color of this is not very appealing. Pinkish. It's like coral colored. Yeah. Coral. It's salmon pants. Big difference here. We are now... We're hitting the beach, boys. We got seafood in this one and I'm digging it. It is... It needed something. And this is actually pretty good. I like the clam flavor. Yeah, it definitely smells gnarly. It brings a deeper umami flavor to it. It's good. You're gonna dig it. It's not nearly as tomatoey, I don't think, as the other one. No, it's clammy. There's clams in these waters. It's not like seafood in a... It's not overbearing, but it's nice. It brings something more to the table. It's just... It's so umami heavy. It is. I think it needs some of that citric tomato character. I agree. I think it would be... Get ready for the clam juice, Jenna... . with a little bit more tomato character. One thing worth mentioning is that when you make your own Micheladas, a lot of the recipes... I gave you the iceberg. He's laughing too much. They're very citrus heavy, like bonkers, like half a lime and then you put even more. All right. They perk right up when they get that clam in them. I think some of it's the lemon. There's some lemon here too. Oh, **** you. This is all clam. It's a seafood cocktail. Yeah. I actually like it more than the Modelo one though. Natural flavors and vegetable juice for color, not for flavor. It's got the junkiness on the sides too, like mine foamed up with a bit of head and then it settled down and it left like that V8 film on the glass. I'll give it that. I mean, that's speaks that there's some real ingredients in there, I guess. So the Bud Light ones are by far the more popular option, but there are normal, Bud Heavy as some people like to say. Diesel. Normal Budweiser Chelada, Hecho con Clamado. So again, you're going to ride the seafood wave here. This is Picante. So for those of you don't hablo Espanol, that is spicy. Let's see how spicy it is. It's as spicy as... Don't give me clam juice if you don't want me to pour it out, all right? This seems... Less tomato-y in color, interestingly. Very... I think there's some kind of green pepper on there. It's probably a jalapeno or it looks fatter than a serrano. It's not super hot, but it's that green chili taste. Not what I was expecting. It's kind of like eating a canned Rotel. Yeah. This is not as good as the Bud Light one. Does not seem as... Maybe I didn't invert it enough, but I'm not getting as much of the Clamato either. Yeah. Overall, milder flavor. Yeah. I don't know what to make of it. Not berry enough, not tomato enough. All right, I have high hopes for this one. This is Vicky. It reminds me of someone married in an X-Murder. Are we supposed to keep the ice for this one? I'm ditching the ice. Yeah, you don't need to. All right, so this is with Victoria, which I have to say is one of the better Mexican lagers, in my opinion. It's one of those like Vienna lager inspired Mexican beers. Surprisingly low ABV. Normal Victoria is 4% alcohol and it's actually basically light beer calories, which is worth mentioning. It's like a hundred and... Okay, it's a note of it actually. Where did I get it here? Maybe I didn't. It's close. I mean, it's like regular Victoria is 4% 135 calories. So kind of like a low ABV, almost light beer, but with a lot more character than a light beer. So if you're like tired of your same old light beers, it's like 15 calories more than or 20 than than most light beers. But normal Victoria worth trying. This one, I think, has the most interesting ingredients versus a lot of the other ones, being that it says Chamoy and also has some tamarind. Yeah, they're clearly telegraphying what's in the Chamoy with tamarind and apricot and chili peppers on the label. Whoa. I've been eating this Chamoy this entire time, going, what is that flavor? Apricot. I was not expecting that. Ooh, apricot. Yeah, that's a lot of apricot. Ooh. I got high hopes for this Vicky Chamoy. Wow. I mean, never mind. It definitely pops with that tangy, fruity saltiness. Oh, yeah. Oh, this is nice. What's your problem with this, Roger? It kind of reminds me of like Jolly Ranchers again. Maybe not straight up watermelon, but it kind of it's got that fruity sour, like the tamarind sour. Tamarind sour, so. Yeah, so it's almost like think like green apple Jolly Rancher. Like it's almost got some of that. I don't know. Yeah, I see what you're saying. I like it. I could drink this. I'd probably to finish that entire giant can would want that sweetness toned down a little bit from the you're describing. But right. It's good. It's interesting. I think this would be better over ice. I mean, looking at the color, it doesn't look Viennalauger based. Not a ton of Chamoy. So I mean, tomato in this. I wonder if it even has tomato. Maybe it doesn't. Explains the flavoring a little bit. Anyway, definitely a different. I mean, it stands out as a different kind of option, but very citrusy, good amount of spice. I shouldn't have put in the same glass with the Clamato ones because all I can smell is clam and Chamoy. All right. Well, that concludes our pre-prepared options, which there's a few more in stores, but we really gave you quite a rundown of the multitude of options that are available. If you're digging this kind of flavor, again, as I mentioned, there's no set recipe for Micheladas, so it really is a perfect option to make your own riffs and make it how you like it. If you don't want to amass a bunch of different ingredients, one option is to pick up a bottle of Michelada Love Mix, only $4.99 a bottle. They pride themselves on it being real ingredients, not just flavorings. They also like to emphasize that this is no seafood, so if you're allergic to shellfish, then you can't have Clamado. This is no seafood, no MSG either, because some of these mixes have soy sauce that has some of that in there, or there's no gluten in it either. Some soy sauces are made with wheat in addition to the soybeans. Really? Yeah. Most commercial soy sauces are wheat based. Really? This uses gluten-free soy sauce, tomato juice, hot sauce, Worcestershire sauce, and they go with the vegan one. There's no anchovies in it. Nacho peppers in their brine. It's funny that they bothered to call them not like you mean jalapenos. Yeah. Nacho peppers. Those nacho peppers. Celery seed, chili, lime spice, so I assumed tine, black pepper, and salt. That is a nice walkthrough of basically how you make your own Michelada. I don't think I really saw people using nacho peppers, but everything else is usually in recipes. Soy sauce isn't as common, and usually it's not Worcestershire and soy, it's one or the other. But everything else, celery seed, I don't think I've really seen that. That to me is more of like a Bloody Mary thing. But anyway, let's give this a try and see what kind of Michelada. We're going to shake that now. Yeah. I did earlier, but we'll give it another. So the recipe is right on the thing here. One thing I will salute with them is they didn't put any citrus in here. So they want you to actually squeeze the citrus. But that's hard, Roger. Well, it's kind of funny, right? So half of this is to make it not as labor intensive, but they will not compromise when it comes to the citrus. So you got to use fresh. Three ounces of. We've reached a new low on this side of the table. We're dipping ranch potato chips into chamoy sauce because we are so hungry and bored. Told you we should have gotten tacos. The place on the street is BYOB. Oh, we can just ask them if we could record down there next time. There we go. How did you get the tahini to stick on these rims? Tahini. We're using Tahini's chamoy sauce, which I prefer. And then this. Their chamoy, you know, again, I know, must not have them. I just don't really like the the fakey apricot. This is a foamy boy. Must be reacting with all the salt in the mix. So that's pretty easy. I mean, it's three ounces of Michelada love, one tablespoon of lime juice, which I use like a half a lime, which is about right. That's what I saw in their video. They were doing a pine classroom with tahini or salt. So in this case, you're having it with chamoy. You could just use a lime. And you're using Modelo Speciale here. Correct. Pretty mild flavor. Well, I'm having trouble getting past the chamoy, the tahini rim, the flavor here. It's a thick layer. Here, give me your other cup. No, it's all right. I've made a little. A divot now? A channel. Is anybody else experiencing that? That it tastes. Yeah, but I've poured some into a second glass. And this is really mild. I mean, it just tastes like watered down Bloody Mary mix. Yeah. If you don't taste the beer, you don't taste the mix. It's just this watery nothing. Here, if you want to pour some of this and if you've got another cup, that's just, you know, the stuff without the mix or without the Chamoy. It's pretty flavorless without the Chamoy, honestly. Yeah, not a lot going on. Nope. What the hell? I expected more. It needs like, it needs tahini mixed in. Yeah, give me the tahini. It's very muted. The tahini and Chamoy rim is explosively flavorful. Oh, it's so good. I'm going to sprinkle tahini right into it and stir it up. I don't know, maybe you need a higher ratio of mixed to beer. It's weird to me because all of these, like, you know, we're using Modelo here, it seems to strip away all the beer character. Yeah, it's like watery tomato juice. Well, Roger is busting out the Clamado. Clamado time. So, of course, the good people at Clamado are going to tell you to use a lot of Clamado, but... You don't know anything about the morals of this company. We're going to do kind of the recipe slash my riff. Well, given the way the last one turned out, I think a lot of Clamado is not a bad Clamado, necessarily. Right. Le Amparo. So a dash of Worcestershire. I'm going to do a healthy dash. That was a healthy dash, baby. Where's the Valentina? Good amount. Roger, you're not holding back on this one. It's going to be a spicy number. Should we do some tamarind? So kind of 50-50 on if people use lemon or lime. Should we do both? Air on the side of flavor, Roger. Take us to flavor town. I think this is going to hit it. He put a lot of Worcestershire and a lot of hot sauce in it. See, that's what the Michelada Love Mix was missing. Yeah. Ooh, and that's a heen right in. A little salt in there. Who else you know who adds to heen by the plateful? Attempt number two. So we tried the Michelada Love Mix with the heen and Chamoy Rim and the heen and Chamoy Rim was very flavorful. The drink itself was pretty on the lame side, right? Totally agree. Nice mix, good ingredients, quality ingredients. It just tasted a little too watered down. So Roger, you've made essentially one from scratch now. So we want to run down these ingredients for us one more time. So Clamado, I used about four, four and a half ounces. Healthy dash of Leigh and Perrin's Worcestershire, a healthy dash of Valentina, half a lime, a little sprinkle of tahini. Lemon? And yeah, half a lemon as well. This is f**king good. This is really good. So much more flavor than the other ones, I think. And I'm normally not, you know, a big tomato juice guy, but the other ones didn't have enough. I think if anything, you could use more tajine just to add more salt. Yeah, some people do also put just normal salt and not tajine. But yeah, feel free to. What kind of monster doesn't want to add a spice with their salt? I mean, I think the conclusion was going to be this all along. But DIY is the way to go. Yeah. This is just leaps and bounds. This is really good. And again, this is such a good flavorful. If you're looking for something that's a low ABV option, you know, these much like Ranch Water, you know, really were hugely popular and are popular in Texas, where it's just super hot Mexico, obviously, as well. But from the US standpoint, like they've caught on. Do you feel this is that appreciably better than the canned Bud Light one, though? Yes. But the Bud Light one was the best. The Bud Light one had the had more clammy character to it, though. Yes. Now, now, did you put tamarind juice in this as well? Oh, yeah, you're right. Sorry. Yeah. Just a tiny bit. Tiny bit. Let me see that can of tamarind juice. Tamarind drink, excuse me, not juice. Can't call it juice. Juice in the old tamarind pod. Yeah. Feel free to give that a try. Just to kind of a baseline. It's not something you might always have on hand. But again, just an infinitely customizable drink. This one is not subtle with the spice. I definitely gave a good amount of hot sauce. You can dial that back. You can even turn it up if you want to go nuts. The spice is just about right. Yeah, I think so. Yeah, it's good. I think Worcestershire is one of the magic ingredients here, along with the tamarind is something that's definitely a little different. And again, lots of citrus. But I kept seeing that, you know, even the Mitchell had a love thing. They say, you know, squeeze lime and like garnish with lemon too. So citrus, definitely a big part of this drink. Tomato can, you know, play a role. Clamado, man, hats off. It is a good combo. I guess there's a reason they drink so much of it, including in Canada. It's like the national drink is a national drink of Canada is a bloody Caesar. The US is flyover country for clamado. But yeah, spoiler alert. Get yourself some clamado and pick up some of these Cheladas and start playing around with it. Like I said, I challenge all of us now. All summer, I'm going to be mixing these things up. I'm really happy with this. I think it's great, but I'm going to keep playing around with the mixtures. My biggest takeaway today, I knew that the lime and the fruity flavored ones were going to be light and refreshing. But you drink a Bloody Mary and it's heavy, it's rich. But in every iteration of the tomato-y ones, they're very light on their feet and actually taste refreshing. Yeah. Yeah. Worth noting, far more refreshing than a Bloody Mary. Yeah. And will not fill you up like a Bloody Mary. By leaps and bounds. It surprises me a little bit because I don't know, it just seems like it should be weightier. Now, you still hear sometimes people or restaurants will serve bloody beers. What's the major difference? Just less of the traditionally Hispanic ingredients, I suppose? Yeah. Not as much spicy stuff. Probably not Clamado, probably just tomato juice. Tomato. Sometimes those even have like, they definitely would always have Worcestershire, I feel. But yeah, they're very congruent. They're a neighboring kind of thing. Well, I think that concludes our exploration of Cheladas. We can keep screwing around and making more. Like I said, I think we do a follow-up episode where we play around with this more. Let's mix all the fruit ones and make fruit punch. That's what I was suggesting earlier. We can do custom blends on those fruity ones. Yeah. Minus the gross watermelon. Why are people drinking that? Come on. Because it tastes like candy. Same people who like stone. Miss out on that mango and pineapple train. Those are the best ones. Yeah. I'm sure a lot of people dig seltzer and stuff. It's not a big leap. Well, thanks again for listening to another episode of Barrel to Bottle. If you liked what you heard, please leave us a review on the podcast downloading platform of your choosing. Tell your friends, your neighbor, your mom to give us a listen. Until next week, I am Roger. I'm Chris. My biggest disappointment today was that Roger did not use his paws, but an actual citrus squeezer. Too much. There wasn't enough time. On that note, I'm Jenna. Yeah, I'm Pat. Keep tasting.