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The Raspberry Beer cocktail is one of those extremely simple drinks that are surprisingly tasty. It blends raspberry rum with a can of cheap beer.

Let me start off with some brutal honesty: hipsters, this is not the drink you’re looking for. This is a drink designed to turn cheap beer into something delicious.

This is the classic recipe, which has appeared in a number of cocktail books. In recent years, people have added all sorts of things to it to fancy it up.

They include ingredients like raspberry lemonade concentrate, elderflower liqueur, fresh raspberries (it’s just not a cocktail, apparently, until you’ve floated some whole fruit in it), vodka, whatever.

But the truth is, this drink is all about rescuing beer that isn’t so delicious on its own. And yes, it really does work well with cheap beer – something decent, but meh.

You can use a better beer, but the rum tends to overwhelm the beer flavor anyway. That is, after all, the whole point.

Specifically, the raspberry rum adds a nice fruity note to the bitterness of the beer, and brings out some of beer’s natural sweetness.

Feel free to add every fruit you have in the kitchen, and every vaguely fruity spirit that’s in your bar. If that’s what you want, go for it.

But sometimes a drink should just be simple. This recipe takes about two minutes and no real bartender skills. It’s easy to make and easy to love.

The Raspberry Beer makes for a great change of pace from regular beer. You’ll probably tend to think of it as just flavored beer, so keep in mind it’s also powered by a full shot of a liquor.

There’s an alternative presentation for this drink that can be a lot of fun. You can serve it like a Boilermaker, with the raspberry rum in a shot glass to be dropped inside.

Of course, the problem with shot-in-a-glass cocktails is that you can crack a tooth on a rapidly rising shot glass. Or, um, so I’ve heard from a friend.

I think it tastes better if you actually pour the rum in and give it a quick stir, but try it both ways.

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