Ice-cold light lager poured over ice into a salt- or Tajín-rimmed glass, the Michelada drinks savory, spicy and endlessly refreshing, with a hard squeeze of lime lifting every sip. Hot sauce brings the heat and Worcestershire a dark, salty undertow, while an optional splash of tomato juice turns it rounder and redder — a beer seasoned entirely to the drinker's taste.
Garnish: Lime Wedge
Built · Highball · On the Rocks
rinse
Rim a chilled highball or pint glass with salt (or a Tajín chili-salt rim).
add
Fill the glass with ice, then add the lime juice, hot sauce, Worcestershire, and any optional soy sauce, salt, or tomato juice.
build
Stir briefly to combine the seasonings.
top
Slowly pour in the chilled light Mexican lager to fill, topping up with more beer as you drink.
garnish
Garnish with a lime wedge.
Cantina legend credits a club regular, Michel Ésper, who in the 1960s took to asking for his beer "like a lemonade" — with lime, salt and ice — at San Luis Potosí's Club Deportivo Potosino. A rival account skips the man altogether and hears the name in mi chela helada, slang for "my ice-cold beer." No single inventor or founding year is on record. The drink has since become a generic Mexican beer preparation, made in countless regional styles and especially beloved as brunch fuel in Mexico City.