Michael Kiser

Three Nashville brewers sipped beer from small plastic cups in the backroom of Bootleg Biology, Tennessee’s only yeast lab. The lab’s garage door, framed by an old red, white, and blue brewers’ conference banner, was open despite the early February cold. The beer they were sampling was brewed with a wild yeast collected from a sunflower. Surrounded by brewing and lab equipment, they compared tasting notes. They pronounced it “Belgian saison-y,” with flavors of bubblegum and banana.

The early, early morning hours of Oct. 2, 2021, should’ve been quiet. In most of Albany, they were. But if you hung a left off of New York State Route 5 onto Walker Way, you couldn’t miss the line of cars—more than 100 long—that extended well beyond the shuttered garage door emblazoned with a script font reading “Fidens.” The occasion was the brewery’s second anniversary.

In a city known for its spectacular array of Mexican cuisine, it’s fitting that one of its best-known cocktails is modeled after barbacoa, a slow-cook method of preparing meat meant to create a tender, juicy, and extra-flavorful final result. Made with mezcal, lemon, lime, ginger syrup, and chipotles, with red bell pepper and beef jerky for garnish, Julian Cox’s breakout cocktail, invented in 2008, is the superlative example of a drink born of the Angel City.