The Unique, Michelada-Inspired Garnishes To Dress Up A Can Of Beer

Everybody loves a good cocktail garnish but beer is often left unadorned. One of the few exceptions to the rule is with a Michelada. We were recently chatting with Ashleigh Phelps, Dos Equis Brand Director, about Micheladas and got to thinking about all the ways people can get creative with their beer garnishes.

As Phelps puts it, "A Michelada is a traditional Mexican drink typically made with lager beer, lime juice, tomato juice, clam juice, assorted sauces, spices and chili peppers." It's a beer cocktail that draws direct inspiration from a bloody mary and a super-garnished Michelada is a great way to celebrate the weekend. "The idea of a dressed beer is simple," Phelps continued. "Put some citrus and salt around the rim of a can or bottle to make it more complex and bring a different level of flavor to the beer. What makes it fun is the wide variety of customizations."

With that, we started dreaming of all the different ways you could garnish beer. Although we take inspiration from Micheladas, these ideas aren't specific to just that drink alone, nor are they only applicable to Mexican lagers. As we explore the different garnishes we'll talk about what beers we think would be a good fit. And if you're having trouble getting the garnish to work on a beer can you can always pour the beer into a pint glass.

Love them or hate them, pickles' sour vinegar taste provides a great counterpart to the malty sweetness of a cold beer. Picklebacks are often used as a chaser for spirits, but you can also find pickles being used as garnishes for all sorts of drinks like pickle wedges flowing out of a bloody mary or cornichons skewered on top of a martini.

There are actually quite a few types of beer that a pickle garnish would go well with. If you want something that's equally pungent and flavorful, try an IPA with its big-bodied hops. For something that's going to let the pickle shine while also mellowing it out, try a cold pint of Kolsch. Although we are focusing primarily on pickled cucumbers here, any kind of pickled vegetable will work. Cocktail onions are made from little pearl onions and they would go great with similar types of beer as well.

If sour isn't your thing, the unique herbal pop of mint leaves may be more your speed. In the cocktail world, we associate mint with drinks like a mint julep or a mojito. If these drinks teach us anything, it's that mint can counterbalance the rugged bite of whiskey while also playing nice with lime and rum. The flavor doesn't matter as much since people are less likely to eat a mint garnish than a pickle garnish, but the scent is going to impact the taste whether you eat it or not so you won't necessarily want to slap a mint sprig on every beer you find.

The first beer that comes to mind would definitely be a stout since the dark, dense beer would call to mind something like a mint chocolate bar. You could also go for a porter instead of a stout but they tend to be lighter, which takes away from that milk chocolate flair we're looking for. Alternatively, you could go for something bright and citric like a sour for your mint garnish. We already know citrus fruits go well with mint thanks to our aforementioned mojitos, and what beer style is better at imitating the sweet tang of citrus than sours? For similar reasons, you could also try a hazy IPA as those tend to have a strong citrus profile as well.

If you're dreaming of autumn leaves and cozy sweaters, a pumpkin spice garnish on your beer is a fun way to live out the fantasy. The most straightforward approach would be to use pumpkin spice as a rim. A second option would be to sprinkle it across the beer's foamy head the same way you use powdered sugar to decorate a cake.

Much like the mint sprig, the smell of the pumpkin spice is going to alter the experience. Unless, of course, you opt for the pumpkin spice rim which means you'll get an actual burst of fall flavor. In this case, you may want to consider mixing the pumpkin spice with some sugar. The spice mix will be more likely to stick to the glass and it will soften pumpkin spice's more bitter notes.

An easy beer recommendation here is a hefeweizen. Hefeweizens are often quite sweet which, like the sugar rim, provides a good baseline for the pumpkin spice to spring off of. If hefeweizens aren't your thing, you could try an amber ale for something similar or an imperial stout if you're looking for something with more body.

A crispy strip of bacon probably won't last long as a garnish before it gets eaten up, but that doesn't strike us as a problem. There are a surprising number of foods that bacon pairs well with and beer is happily one of them. It definitely goes well with a Michelada but it's a versatile enough garnish that you can almost put it anywhere. The main problem here is going to be the visuals. Garnishes add to the sensory experience of a drink in many ways. But even if smell and taste are a big component, the visual aspect is arguably the most important.

Unfortunately, if you pour a pint of beer and simply toss a bacon strip into the glass there's a good chance you aren't going to achieve that wow factor we're looking for. There are ways to get around this, though. One possibility is to take a cocktail skewer and run it through the bacon so it's bunched up like a winding snake. Then, depending on the type of beer, use a second garnish to support the presence of the bacon like an orange peel or a maraschino cherry.

We weren't joking when we called bacon versatile. A bacon garnish would go best with a porter, IPA, or red ale since those have bigger flavors. But you can just as easily stick this on a pilsner, Kolsch, or hefeweizen and it's going to perform.

Cheese is another garnish that you have to get creative with since it won't easily stick to the side of the glass like a lime wedge and you can't drop it in and call it a day. That's why cocktail skewers are so popular. Honestly, a cheese and bacon garnish sounds pretty good to us but you can opt for just cheese and be perfectly fine. You'll want to use a cheese that's hard enough that it can be easily skewered. Soft cheeses like brie need not apply. As for which cheeses to use, that all depends on what you're into.

If you're uncertain about your ability to properly pair cheese and beer together, the easiest route would be to go for a light cheese like havarti or Swiss and pair it with a light beer like a lager or pilsner. Don't be afraid to experiment, though. With so many different types of cheese to choose from we can't possibly get to all of them here, but your palette is probably more refined than you realize so go with your gut and pick a pairing that sounds good to you. As a jumping-off point, try halloumi with a stout or Manchego with a nut brown ale.

There's something pleasantly boujee about shrimp and that's just the kind of energy we need for a beer garnish. Shrimp is tasty enough on its own not to need very much seasoning, but you can just as easily whip up a batch of sweet and spicy grilled shrimp for the occasion if you really want to be extra. Like most of the garnish ideas on this list, you can use shrimp skewers alone or pair them with another garnish for a big visual bouquet on your brew.

A great way to amplify the shrimp garnish is to use an Old Bay rim. Old Bay is a spice blend that's often used to give bloody marys a boost of savory flavor and it works well here to tie the visual aspect together and to give your beer that extra pop. With such bold flavors, you'll likely want to opt for a light Mexican lager, Kolsch, or Pilsner if you use the Old Bay rim.

If you decide not to go with the Old Bay rim the beer pairing will change somewhat. Shrimp are somewhat salty with a touch of sweetness to them. With that in mind, a pale ale or hefeweizen would work well here as they both have a complex enough flavor profile that they can stand up to the shrimp's character without being so heavy-handed that they overpower them.