Hong Kong highball bar recalls Prohibition-era Chicago mayor with boilermaker cocktail
- The ThirtySix Bar & Co’s version of the whiskey and beer drink pays tribute to Anton Cermak
- Cermak is famous for being killed by a bullet intended for US president Franklin D. Roosevelt
Consumption of cocktails can be intended to signal sophistication. The dry martini, for example, suggests classic elegance – James Bond would wear a tuxedo to sip one.
The boilermaker, not so much. Its connotations are more blue collar than white tie. But, given that the term can apply to an order for a shot of whiskey with a beer chaser, or simply to the act of pouring the spirit into the beer, does it even qualify as a cocktail?
It’s a surprise therefore to find that it is one of the signature drinks of a new bar purporting to specialise in highballs. The ThirtySix Bar & Co, in Central, serves long drinks, mixed with a Japanese-inspired attention to detail and an emphasis on the quality of the spirits, which include many small-batch whiskies.
Although highballs are the bar’s core speciality, owner Philippe Nguyen reasoned that to establish its credibility it also needed a few classic cocktails from other families of drinks, and its own twists on them. A version of the boilermaker was chosen to feature on its opening list.
After a hard day’s work, the workers needed to relax, so whiskey, mostly bourbon, was strong enough, but because they had been sweating all day they also needed to replenish fluids, so they ordered beer for a chaser
The name “boilermaker” is widely thought to have been chosen in the 19th century in honour of the workers who built or operated steam locomotives in the early days of the American railroads, but it may have originated earlier on the other side of the Atlantic. That story traces the boilermaker back to an accident that befell a British inventor around the beginning of the 19th century.
