Beerita: the dumbest cocktail ever?

Saturday mornings are spent just taking it easy in my house. My wife and I slowly digest the news of the week, sharing ignorant stories here and there, and passing our morning being reminded of just how ridiculous people can be. One of the stories that peeked my interest this morning was a story arguing the merit of the Beerita (a frozen margarita with a bottle of beer stuck in it). Has anyone ever heard of this ridiculous concoction…because I haven’t? Anyway, I wanted to share the article with everyone here, so that you could decide for yourselves if it’s worth drinking. The original article was written by Leslie Brenner, Restaurant Critic and what follows is the article in its entirety.

Somehow a drink craze that's been sweeping the nation -- for years! -- has escaped my noticed until recently. It's the beerita -- a frozen margarita with a bottle of beer stuck upside down in it, so the beer dribbles into the margarita. The earliest mention of it I found in a quick web search is 2007, when it was appearing in Minnesota, Florida and Boston; who knows where and when it was actually created. Anyway, a colleague had one in Grapevine, in a restaurant called Esparza's. It's also been spotted at Katy Trail Ice House, Yucatan Taco Stand in Fort Worth, and Place at Perry's, the subject of my latest review. There I had a chance to sample it.

At first, I thought it sounded dumb, then I thought maybe it would be just the thing to fix up a margarita that's too sweet. At Place at Perry's, the beer in question is a Shiner Bock (more typically, a Mexican beer, usually a Corona, is used); the margarita's made with Azunia Reposado tequila. It wasn't bad, but the beer seemed to seep in more slowly than it should have, and it just tasted like a frozen margarita with a little beer in it. But I couldn't help but wonder: Do the bartenders wash those beer bottles before putting them in your drink? How many people had handled it? I put the question to Place at Perry's, whose publicist emailed me this: "Our bartenders wipe the bottles wtih a sanitzer solution prior to serving."

Really? That almost seems worse than the alternative.

OK. Where do you stand? Is a beerita an incredibly dumb idea, or one whose time has come?

Original article can be found at http://eatsblog.dallasnews.com/archives/2012/04/beerita-delicious-or-dumb.html