Is that a beer in your cocktail?

By Erin Ryan

Tuesday, Aug. 2, 2011 | 7:14 p.m.

Drinkers often draw a line between beer and booze, but they’re seriously missing out. Case in point: Bellagio’s Summer Shandy, a beer-based cocktail by award-winning mixologist Matthew Myers. After years of favoring intensely sweet fruit drinks, the American palate, he says, is “opening up.” Drawing on his culinary background, Myers used the fusion concept to build his shandy on a Stella Artois base with accents of gin, ginger, citrus and spicy rum-based spirit Velvet Falernum. It’s one of several beer cocktails in demand at Bellagio’s Petrossian Lounge. “Beer can add dimensional layers to a cocktail—a refreshing edge,” Myers says.

Summer Shandy

Ingredients:

.5 oz. Velvet Falernum

1 oz. Bombay Sapphire

.5 oz. Nagomi yuzu syrup

.5 oz. Domaine Canton

.5 oz. fresh lime juice

1 splash ginger beer

3 oz. Stella Artois

Kaffir lime leaves

Method: In a mixing glass, muddle lime leaves and yuzu syrup. Add ice, Falernum, Domaine Canton and lime juice. Add fresh ice to a Bordeaux glass. Shake and strain cocktail over ice. Top with beer and garnish with lime leaves.