Bartender, we'll have a round of beeritas

ARLINGTON -- At a Cinco de Mayo party earlier in the month, Joanne Moran was in the kitchen mixing up batches of drinks. Spread out in front of her were tequila, lime juice, ice cubes, and a pitcher. But she wasn't making margaritas.

Instead of the triple sec that is an integral part of the traditional margarita recipe, Moran was using light beer. She was making a cocktail that she calls a beerita. She first encountered beeritas at a party in Minneapolis, where she lives. The drink caught on in her group because it's refreshing, especially during the summer as something to sip at a barbecue. She and her friends liked the cold, sweet libation and spread the word. "I took it to another party, then someone else took it to a party. One girl took it to New York," Moran says.

A beer lover could get voted off her bar stool for even mentioning beer cocktails. The concept causes purists to make faces as if they had sucked on very sour lemons. But the fact is that because beer is widely available and fairly inexpensive, people have been using it as a mixer for a long time.

This country was founded by people who enjoyed beer and all kinds of mixers. A concoction called Flip, a popular drink with colonists, was made with ale, gin, beaten eggs, and sugar shaken to make it froth, then topped with freshly grated nutmeg.

Other beer mixology classics include the Boilermaker (a shot of whiskey in a glass of beer), Black and Tan (Guinness stout and a pale ale or lager), Black Velvet (Guinness and champagne), Snakebite (stout and cider), lager and lime (self-explanatory), Shandy (ale and lemonade, ginger beer, or ginger ale), and the Beer Bloody Mary. Search the Web and a site such as thatsthespirit.com will give some more exotic options: Liverpool Kiss (dark beer with cassis), Bee Sting (dark beer and orange juice), Skip and Go Naked (beer, lemon juice, gin, and a dash of grenadine), Broadway (beer and cola, it's big in Japan), Caribbean Night (beer and an ounce of coffee liqueur), and South Wind (beer with a shot of melon liqueur).

Though the beerita hasn't achieved nationwide fame, a couple of beer cocktails with a Mexican pedigree have made it onto drink cards. The Michelada is dark lager like Mexico's Modelo Negro with lime juice, Tabasco, soy sauce, and Worcestershire sauce served in a salt-rimmed glass. The Chelada is light lager with lime and salt over ice. Tu Y Yo, a Mexican restaurant in Somerville, serves both.

These drinks may be having success because they seem familiar. "People are willing to try a Chelada," says Lauren Clark, a longtime beer writer and publisher of drinkboston.com, a site devoted to cocktails and bar culture in Boston, "because they've already gotten their heads around the concept of Corona and lime." Clark herself might drink a Michelada or a Chelada "if I were at a barbecue and it was hot and somebody mixed up a batch -- sure."

Perhaps hoping to attract consumers who are intrigued by the Chelada's Latin cache, Miller Brewing Company is rolling out Miller Chill, which the company's website describes as a "chelada style light beer with a hint of lime juice and salt."

Back in Arlington, nobody in the group of friends in their 30s and 40s has heard of beeritas before, but they're game. "It's like candy," announces Moran's fiance, Ramon Zapata of Somerville.

"It goes down very easy," agrees Joanne Mullan of Cambridge. (But they both switch back to straight beer after sampling the cocktail.)

Another partygoer is more impressed. "I don't like beer," says Linda Karam of Cambridge. But she concedes that she likes the lime and beer combination in the beerita. "This is my second one," she says, holding up a glass.

Linda Karam, meet Miller Chill.