Dull the Horror of Pointless War This Memorial Day with a Classic Boilermaker

Sunday Cocktail Corner is a series dedicated to finding just the right libation for the situation.

By the time you read this on Sunday afternoon, with one of the multiple days our country dedicates to the bodies of our slain soldiers (Memorial Day) looming on the immediate horizon, the Iran War may finally, genuinely, be over. Sort of, anyway. Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth have already been pretending for weeks that the war is over, even when we’re still shooting at/killing Iranians on boats in the Strait of Hormuz, but at least we don’t currently seem to be engaged in winging any million dollar missiles in the direction of elementary schools at the moment. That’s something. On Saturday, Trump claimed that a formal peace deal was on the immediate horizon, potentially conferring such boons to the United States as “reopening the strait exactly as it was before the war,” and “not making a deal on the Iranian nuclear plan as Trump insisted he would.” Big wins for our country, I’m sure you’ll agree. Ah, and there wasn’t “regime change” either, regardless of what the POTUS may claim in his employment of semantic jiu-jitsu.

If this is indeed the “end,” as it were, we can sit back knowing that we accomplished … pretty much none? … of our goals, and only had to spend $25 billion-plus in the process, far more than it would have cost to operate USAID for the entire year. Along the way, the U.S. and our Israeli allies managed to kill more than 3,400 people (half of them civilians), injured 26,500 more, and suffered hundreds of casualties of our own. At least 15 Americans have died. So yeah, obviously we should pin medals on everyone involved here. Maybe a big ceremony like in the end of A New Hope?

The sheer pointlessness of American military quagmires of this kind, achieving nothing and perpetually threatening to flare back up and put us right back where we started, obviously demands a drink. But it seems almost blasphemous to craft some kind of involved, ornate cocktail in honor of a scenario so blatantly depressing. This is a time for simple reflection, to embrace the utilitarian and most basic aspects of why we choose to consume ethanol in the first place. We don’t always need to hide behind epicurean sophistication, to act as if those subtle flavors are the only reason we so enjoy an alcoholic drink. Humanity has been consuming ethanol since prehistory; the least we can do is be honest with ourselves about why that is. We drink to feel a little better about life, to both celebrate and mourn in equal measure. It dulls the pain of living in a senselessly cruel world. And there’s no better way to engage in that kind of salt-of-the-earth drinking than with a classic boilermaker.

Sure, you can call it a beer and a shot as well. You can call it whatever you want, in fact, because the boilermaker is pretty much the most amenable bar order there is. It’s consumed all over the world, in a thousand different iterations and permutations–it’s not always beer, and it’s certainly not always whiskey, although that’s probably what you’re imagining. In Germany they call it Herrengedeck, a beer served with a shot of korn, effectively unaged German moonshine. In the Netherlands, it’s Kopstootje, which subs in jenever. In Sweden they incorporate the ubiquitous Jägermeister; in Korea it’s soju. Individual U.S. cities have their own expressions, like Philadelphia’s Citywide Special (PBR and Jim Beam) or Illinois’ mildly infamous Chicago Handshake, which consists of an Old Style beer and an instantly memorable shot of Jeppson’s Malört, which if you haven’t been lucky enough to sample is the kind of thing you will remember (derogatory) for the rest of your days. Anywhere such a boilermaker is served, it’s a basic, unpretentious order for the discerning drinker who would rather simply enjoy their night rather than trawl through a cocktail menu and find the 10th new negroni riff of the week.

You can, in other words, choose any combination you like, and there genuinely is no wrong answer. Regardless of what you choose, it should offer both high value and the invitation to affirm what the boilermarker is: An occasional, unhealthy luxury, akin to eating a big slice of cake, that we choose to engage in despite knowing that it’s not good for us. A beer and a shot is a means to an end, proudly embraced by drinkers who have no intention to lie to themselves about what they’re up to. You can even make the deranged choice to drop the shot into the beer, muddled a decision as this may be … although it did at least give us a great scene in Park Chan-wook’s recent No Other Choice. No other drink–although really, your doctor will remind you that it’s two drinks–is so powerfully open ended.

For Memorial Day, then, we celebrate the simple freedom of being able to select our potables of choice, in honor of those who will never get to make such a simple choice again. Whether it’s whiskey, korn, or even the grim specter of Malört, the boilermaker reminds us not only that we are alive, but that life is finite. We need to enjoy it while we can.