Okay, let me start by saying that I was raised by a man who probably knew every possible combination of alcohol known to modern man. Not a bartender, but a bartender’s customer. My father, who used to take me around to every pub in this area that allowed kids inside, knew many bar owners by their first and last names. My father and these bar owners had much more than the simple seller/customer relationship. They were usually friends and drinking buddies. This was probably part of the reason he could take me inside and I would sit at a table, drinking a soda while they played cribbage and drank alcohol at the bar. According to my father, a boilermaker was created by dropping a shot glass full of whiskey into a mug or large glass of beer. I believe that drinking it down without the shot glass busting you in the teeth or smacking you in the nose was part of the feat of drinking this concoction. Being from Illinois, perhaps this way of making a boilermaker might be regional. I never tried it myself, as I prefer my whiskey neat, or at least on the rocks. Why contaminate good liquor with sub-standard barley water?
All seriousness aside, I have heard the same definition for boilermaker, although never that bit about not knocking your teeth out while drinking one. But then, perhaps that explains the lack of front teeth in some of the old geezers I knew back when. Never could understand what they were saying when I asked them about it.
I am, at least nominally, from Illinois having been born and raised in Chicago, so I don’t guess I’ve added much to your data base here.
I’ve made them that way with Ten High bourbon and Labatt Blue. Dropping the shot glass right into the pint was how I was taught to make them when I started drinking, and that was that as far as I was concerned.
The term “boilermaker” to describe a whiskey and a beer chaser goes back to at least the 1930’s in print.
The concept of dropping the shot glass of whiskey into the beer seems to be much more modern concept(I’m guessing the 1960’s or later). I can’t give a date, but it certainly isn’t the way the term was born.
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It has been years since I saw the movie, but I remember a scene in “The Right Stuff” of some of the Mercury astronauts in a bar and doing just this. They called it another name, related to the space program.
I think there are two threads going on this question. I’ll repeat what I found for this thread.
The dropping of the shotglass into the beer was called a “depth charge” and is cited in print in the mid-1950’s. The story was recalling incidents from WWII.
I would vote for the dropping method. There are a number of other drinks that involve dropping a shot glass into another drink.
Here are two examples that come to mind. The “Jagerbomb” is where a shot of Jagermeister is dropped into a glass of red bull. And my personal favorite, the “Irish car bomb”. This involves a shot glass filled with half Jameson and half Baileys falling into a glass of Guinness. In both cases it’s not a full pint, probably half that or maybe less. The idea with these drinks is to finish them as quickly as possible after the shot is dropped so you can experience the different flavors mixing as you drink. The overall taste will change by the time you finish it.
I dont know how popular these are, maybe it’s just a college thing.
Round these parts (Louisiana, LSU in particular) we’ve always done “Flaming Dr. Peppers”, in which an ignited shot of 151 is dropped into a beer. I have no idea why they call it that as it tastes nothing like a Dr. Pepper, but they sure as hell are efficient at getting one shitfaced…
byzcath mentioned the movie “The Right Stuff”
In the movie “A River Runs Through It” which takes place in 1930’s Montana, someone at a bar drank the mugfull of beer with the shotglass in it as previously described. I forget whether they actually used the term “bolermaker” but I think they did.
At my college we do sake-bombing: fill a beer mug halfway, place two chopsticks parallel across the top of the mug, balance a filled sake cup on top of the chopsticks. Everyone counts to three, then they simultaneously pound on the table so all of the sake cups fall into the beer mugs. And then the activity dissolves, much like any college activity, into chugging.
Can’t shed any light on what a boilermaker is, though. Sorry.
I’ve been drinking Boilermakers for years, and around these parts (Australia, but IIRC it was the same in London, too) its alway been the beer-and-a-chaser variety - and a Depth Charge is the dropping-the-shot-in-the-glass variety. Thats also how i made them when i was a bartender, and no-one complained.
However, both are little-pansy-girlie-man drinks when stacked against the truly frightening Irish Car-Bomb - take a pint of Guinness, and add a shot of Irish Whisky. Hold a shot of Bailey’s Irish Cream on the side.
Add aforementioned Bailey’s to Guinness/Whisky mix, and chug it all before the Bailey’s goes lumpy in the bottom half of the pint of Guinness - you have about 10 seconds.
My mate Dave (note: the true test for establishing one’s Australian-ness is having a drinking story about your mate Dave) dropped two of these bad-boys in 15 mins. I was bouncing off furniture after one.
An American walks into a pub in Ireland, and announces to the bar that he’ll give $50 to anyone who can drink 15 pints of Guiness in 15 minutes, cheepskate that he was.
One drinker immediately left the bar in a hurry. No one in the bar offered to accept the challenge. In about 14 minutes, the drinker came back into the bar and announced he’d accept the challenge. The American asked why he had left the bar before accepting the bet. The Irishman said–
“I had to go down to the pub over one street to see if I could really do it first.”
Well, the real drinker in my family was grandpa. He was born in 1886 and in the early fifties he talked about boilermakers and described them simply as a shot of whiskey dropped into a schuper (sp.?) of beer. Sorry, I can’t trace it back further.
In my experience, every time I’ve had a Flaming Dr. Pepper (and they are fairly popular around here) it has been a shot of mostly amaretto, topped off with a little 151 and lit on fire, then dropped into about a 2/3 full pine of beer. Then you immediately chug it, and it does actually remotely taste like Dr. Pepper. The beer can range, but the most common accepted “right” beer to use is Shiner Bock (naitive only to Texas).
There is probably a big difference between the taste of a shot of straight 151, and the amaretto/151 shot in the beer.
A friend of mine likes to drink “Dr. Pepper” which is a shot of amaretto in a glass of american (read weak, flavorless) beer. I’ve tried it, and it does taste like Dr. Pepper.
Leave it to you Southern boys to think of lighting it on fire and chugging it!
The first drink I ever ordered in a bar was a rootbeer barrel which they dropped an upside down show of root beer schnapps into a frosty mug of tap beer.
My understanding is that the whiskey was always a chaser–you drank the beer quickly and followed up with the shot. I’d heard of the “drop it in” method from a friend quite recently and assumed it was a college-kid kind of drink.
FWIW, the Coffee People chain in Portland, Oregon has, or had, a drink called a “depth charge” which is coffee with an added shot of espresso.
