Summer is long drink season—the sultry weather leads to cravings for tall, cooling beverages. And so highballs appear, and classic winter drinks like the Negroni find themselves altered and lengthened to become the thirst-quenching Americano.
Summer is also frosted mug season. Just looking at a thick glass mug fogged with rime right out of the freezer can cool you off, especially when it’s filled with a bracing beer.
So I was pleased to find a drink that combined all of the above at EZ’s Liquor Lounge in Houston’s Heights neighborhood. EZ’s is not an antiquated place—it was a bicycle shop until a couple of years ago—but has already set down deep neighborhood roots with its central pool table and vintage neon beer signs and portrait of Willie Nelson on black velvet behind the bar. Co-owner Matt Tanner says the goal was to create a dive bar that also served great cocktails, the kind of place you might think to stop in after Thanksgiving dinner to see friends.
Icehouses, where all and sundry went to buy blocks of ice for their iceboxes, were once community staples around Houston and South Texas. When cheap home refrigeration emerged in the 1920s, icehouses that didn’t disappear morphed into convenience stores and casual bars. EZ’s channels that vibe minus the pedigree. That many of the cocktails come in heavy, frosted mugs adds to the impression.
Among the mug drinks, I’m particularly fond of the Colorado Cool-Aid, a nod to country star Johnny Paycheck’s popular 1977 song about a bar fight at a “beer joint down in Houston, Texas.” The lyrics define Colorado Cool-Aid as “a can of Coors brewed from a mountain stream / It’ll set your head on fire an’ make your kidneys scream.”
Tanner’s drink came out of a fishing trip he and some friends took to Colorado a few years back. He essentially took a whiskey, amaro, and fresh lemon juice cocktail—a sort of Paper Plane—and made it into a long drink by topping it off with Coors Banquet. This turns down the heat and amps up the refreshment, leaving a bright, citrusy flavor with just a complicating hint of amaro and a Coors finish.
Think of it as a crisp taste of the mountains—and a welcome import into the saggy afternoons of a Southern summer, when even the shade seems to sweat.
