"Boilermakers"

[Joseph Carson]

Greeting to all ADS-Listers,

Jerome Foster wrote: "Then what's a boilermaker?"

The recipe for a "boilermaker" is a glass of draft beer with a shot of
Jim Beam (or similar brand of cheap blue-collar bourbon) on the side,
with the drinker tossing the whole shot off at once, and following that
up immediately with a long draught of the beer, to help stifle the gag
reflex (and exponentially increase the intensity of the drinker's
intoxication.)  The drink is a classic, and in some places (like
Milwaukee, Detroit, Chicago and the Twin Cities,) practically "de
rigeur" ritual for inagurating the first serious drunk of a working
man's weekend, and is usually taken before 4 p.m. at the latest, so as
to have a good buzz on in time for "the game" (whatever sports event is
televised on any given night in the bar.) This venerable combination is
also called a "set-up," a "Beam (or bourbon) and beer back" or a
"shooter," depending on the locale it is purchased in, or the
constituency of the establishment where it is imbibed; with the
relatively younger and low-paid end of the socio-economic range its
drinkers generally fall into calling for a "shooter" when their factory
whistles blow, while their older and better paid counterparts order up
their "Beam and beer backs," and those with pretensions to gentility, or
rare female and elderly drinkers of this combo, prefer to request the
"set-up special" to help disguise the depth of their alcoholism.  Lest I
be accused of elitist temperance movement sneering, let the record
reflect that I too was partial to "shooters" in my industrial servitude
years as a wage slave in Cedar Rapids, IA, but managed to get out of
there before my liver was absolutely annihilated. Whatever else I might
think about such a drink these days, there's no gainsaying the fact that
they are cheap, fast and _potent_ (but my dear sweet Lord, the
hangover!) Anyway, thanks for introducing this thread so we can take a
walk (or stumble, rather) down "diminished capacity" lane, when some of
us believed that we were immortal and drank enough of these concoctions
to feel like we really were! (... for a couple of hours, at least, then
woke up to the horrible excations made for such hubris upon our
all-too-mortal coils the next day.) Well, we lived to tell the tale,
didn't we? I raise my glass (of iced tea) in salute to our survival of
the toxic assaults we made on our feckless drunken selves, and to the
hard-won sobriety,or at least moderation, that makes it possible for us
to bear witness to those days at all anymore (and hopefully for many
such toasts to come) ... Prosit! -- With warm regards, Joseph Carson


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