Boilermaker is the North American name for a glass of beer accompanied by, or sometimes invaded by, a shot of whisky. The Boilermaker seems too simple and straightforward—too elemental—to have a history, to have been introduced and tested and approved and propagated in the manner of normal cocktails. And yet, for all its old-as-the-hills airs, it is a relative latecomer to American drinking. While the Scots and the Irish had no qualms about washing their “ball” of whisky down with a mug of beer or ale, American drinkers traditionally used iced water for that function, and indeed thought beer to be an outlandish substitute. When, for example, one New Englander was visiting Scotland in 1846 and had, at one gentleman’s house, “both whisky and beer set before [him],” he found it remarkable—and not just because the gentleman was a clergyman. Even fifty years later the New York Herald could publish a story about a man who went into a saloon and ordered “beer n’ whisky,” side by side, and the consternation such an order caused in the bartender and the regulars. “I’ve heard of queer drinks in my time,” one of the latter observes.
But American drinking habits were changing, and as the German and central European immigrants who came to America in such numbers assimilated the idea of drinking (German) beer and (Irish/American) whisky together became less outlandish. Sometimes the two were even mixed, a concoction at first known by various names—Bohemian Cocktail (1896), Rough Rider Cocktail (1904), and Puddler’s Cocktail (1915; although sometimes the last one, a Pittsburgh favorite, was unmixed). By the 1950s, it had become a Depth Bomb or Depth Charge, with the shot glass dropped into the beer. (This would later give rise to a whole “bomb” class of college-student drinks, such as the Irish Car Bomb, with a mixed shot of Irish whisky and Irish cream liqueur dropped in a pint of Guinness Stout, and the “Jägerbomb,” with Jägermeister and Red Bull energy drink.)
It wasn’t until the 1930s that the unmixed combination got a name that stuck. “Boilermaker and His Helper” was the original version, a boilermaker being a skilled sort of industrial metalworker who was often accompanied by extra muscle. This was colorful enough to catch on and long enough to require abbreviation. By the 1940s it was simply “Boilermaker,” although the fact that in 1948 showman-turned-columnist Billy Rose still had to explain to his readers that the name referred to “straight rye with a beer chaser” indicates that it was not yet in universal use.
As the American art of the cocktail went into eclipse in the 1950s and 1960s, the Boilermaker grew in popularity, if not in elegance. It was still primarily a working-class drink, although it also colonized bohemia (Bob Dylan, for instance, recalled drinking “shooters of Wild Turkey and iced Schlitz” between sets back in his early Greenwich Village days).
As the modern cocktail revolution has evolved, its excesses have driven some drinkers back to the old Boilermaker, only now it comes as a menu item, with spirits and beers paired in various and creative ways. See cocktail renaissance. Fortunately, some of those still involve a shot of rye and a glass of lager beer.
See also Herrengedeck and Kopstoot.
“A False Alarm.” New York Herald, April 5, 1896, 4.
Dylan, Bob. Chronicles: Volume 1. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004.
“Glasgow: From Mr. Schouler’s Letters.” Portland (ME) Advertiser, October 20, 1846.
“Locals Pray for Old Soupbone.” Brooklyn Eagle, April 17, 1938.
“Pitching Horseshoes with Billy Rose.” Utica (NY ) Observer, January 26, 1948.
By: David Wondrich