The Fuzzy’s Beer-Rita, Intoxicating Treat or Gimmick?
Campus West is full of bars and taverns offering a myriad of unique intoxicating concoctions. The many establishments catering to the over-21 crowd tend to focus on Fort Collins’ favorite adult beverage, beer. From the wide variety of beers served from the 34 taps at the Road 34 Deli & Tavern, www.road34.com, to the beer cocktails mixed up on weekends by the bartenders at C. B. & Potts Brewery and Taphouse, www.cbpotts.com, beer is the star of the late night scene in Campus West.
Despite the wide variety of options available to hop heads, nothing is quite as unique or original as the 13 different Beer-Ritas on the Fuzzy’s Taco Shop menu, www.fuzzytacoshop.com. Any visitor to Fuzzy’s is likely to see the strange cocktails known as Beer-Ritas. The typical Beer-Rita is a wild combination of frozen margarita with a bottle of beer upended inside. Seemingly defying the very laws of physics, Beer-Ritas are truly a sight to behold, but are they as pleasing to the taste as they are to the eye? This intrepid reporter decided to put it to the test. The goal was to sample as many Beer-Ritas as possible with the goal of determining if the combination of frozen margarita and beer is a culinary treat or merely a marketing gimmick.
On the recommendation of the bartender, and because it was the day’s special, the first Beer-Rita I tried was the Cran Apple Rita, a combination of a cranberry pomegranate frozen margarita with a 12oz Honeycrisp Apple Shock Top. My first Impressions were of a muddy, slightly malty, fruit-like libation. Like a colorful children’s breakfast cereal I was aware of the present of fruit flavors, but could not distinguish any one in particular.
About a third of the way through the drink, as the proportion of beer to margarita began to skew toward the margarita, I could finally taste the majestic cranberry, tastiest of the American bog-fruits.
As I finished the frozen margarita, I noticed that most of the Shock Top was still in the bottle. Lifting the bottle out of the remnants of the frozen liquid, I emptied the beer into the glass.
I was left drinking a beer out of a straw. At this point I was able to reaffirm a long-held belief that you should never drink beer with a straw. I also discovered I do not like Honeycrisp Apple Shock Top. All in all, I was not impressed by the nebulous, confused, flavors of the Cran Apple Rita.
I chalked up my first Beer-Rita experience to user error and searched the menu for a Beer-Rita that was made with a beer I like. I settled on the Easy Rider and its 12oz Odell’s Easy Street, www.odellbrewing.com, upended in an Italian margarita with amaretto, raspberry and peach liqueurs.
Once again, the flavors all blended together to form a single indescribable flavor that was not unpleasant, but also not quite as good as any of its constituent parts.
Upon the advice of a waitress, I carefully emptied the beer into the frozen margarita as I consumed the mixture to keep them in the proper proportions. Something about the combination of almond, raspberry and peach liquers mixed with an easy drinking wheat beer was slightly disturbing to my tongue, but the spreading warmth in my stomach and the widening smile on my face told me it couldn’t be all bad.
Though better than than Cran Apple Rita, I had the feeling the Easy Rider would have been better enjoyed as two individual drinks.
Undeterred, and only a little surprised the bartender continued to served me, I ordered a third Beer-Rita. This time I was going to play it safe though, no apple-flavored beer, no almond-raspberry-peach-flavored margarita, so I ordered the Ram Horn.
My bartender described the Ram Horn as the classic Beer-Rita, the original, the one that started the craze. It consists of any flavor frozen margarita with a 7oz Coronita upended in it. I went with the traditional lime margarita as I was told the combination of lime and Corona was as classic as these things get.
I must admit my first thought was, “why would you ruin a perfectly good margarita by pouring a Corona into it?” But, with as open a mind as I could muster, I dove right in.
It went down quickly, maybe too quickly. The Coronita was mixing with the frozen margarita and making it slightly liquidy, and easier to drink than a frozen margarita should be.
The margarita did wonders to improve the Coronita. Beyond making it easier to drink quickly, I am afraid though, that the Coronita did not really improve the margarita.
With three Beer-Ritas in my stomach I carefully made my way home to ponder the wisdom of upending bottles of beer into frozen margaritas. My conclusion: despite saving you money over purchasing the beer and the margarita separately, the Beer-Rita is largely a gimmick and an unnecessary way to make your glass top-heavy and increase your opportunity to spill it.
None of the frozen margaritas I had were improved by pouring beer into them. On the other hand, the Honeycrisp Apple Shock Top and the Coronita were improved slightly by adding frozen margarita to them.
My advice to anyone wanting to try a Beer-Rita: tell your bartender you would like the beer and margarita separately so you can mix them at your own leisure then drink them separately.
