A Timmy Taylors Cocktail?

In semi-beery news, local PR firm (and generally lovely folks) SLB PR have launched a new cocktail competition for Yorkshire called Made in Yorkshire. You can read more about it here.

I’m rather a fan of a good cocktail (aren’t we all) and this competition sounds like a good one. The rules are pretty simple, they just state that the cocktail must include an ingredient from Yorkshire. That could be Pontefract liquorice, Wakefield rhubarb or, well, anything we make in this fine region of ours.

Most intriguing though is the suggestion that you could use a Yorkshire ale as base for your cocktail. I’d had a few beer-based cocktails before, and generally found them underwhelming. Local chaps Leeds Brewery launched a few on sale at their lovely Pin bar and I can’t say I took to them.

They made one cocktail for each of their three regular beers, the best being a chocolaty concoction based upon their tasty mild Midnight Bell. It was quite tasty, but sweet and served oh-so cold, and left me wishing I’d just opted for a pint of Bell instead.

But, we have loads of options in Yorkshire, Black Sheep, maybe Old Peculier might work, Rooster’s various flavoured beers might lend themselves well, and some of Fernandes’ lovely rich stouts could do the trick. But, is any cocktail going to improve on the flavours already present in beer?

A great cocktail can really make the most of the flavours of the spirit. Think of the daiquiri, martini or the old fashioned, still strongly reminiscent of their base spirit, but adding extra depth to drink. Is beer already too complex a drink – blessed with its own bitterness and sweetness – to work in a cocktail? Or are the flavours just too subtle in beer to stand up to the addition of fierce spirits.

Perhaps one of BrewDog’s more extreme/daft beers, with their massive abvs and huge hop flavours would be a good solution… But they’re not from Yorkshire, so they can bugger off!

Back to the start though, this Made in Yorkshire competition should be an interesting one, and is a great advert for some of the great produce, bars and bartenders we have round these parts. There’ll be more stuff on http://www.leedsguide.co.uk/food about it as it happens.

Does anyone out there have good experiences with beer cocktails? Or bad experiences? Or good recipes?