Spaghett Cocktail

The Spaghett is a fun Aperol cocktail with beer instead of Prosecco! It’s refreshing and served right in the bottle.

Here’s one of the easiest Aperol cocktails there is: the Spaghett! This fun cocktail is hardly a recipe at all, and it’s built right in a beer bottle. It’s a play on an Aperol spritz, with bubbles come from beer instead of Prosecco. It’s lightly sweet, zingy, and refreshing: here to revolutionize your summer cocktail repertoire. The mysterious name made us give it a try, and (light beer aside), we’re now big fans.

What is a Spaghett?

A Spagett is a beer cocktail made with light beer, lemon juice, and Aperol, an Italian liqueur. It’s a nod to the iconic Aperol Spritz, swapping out the bubbly Prosecco and soda water with beer. It comes out bubbly and refreshing, lightly sweet with a subtle zingy finish. You’ll need three ingredients to make a Spaghett, which is made right inside the beer bottle:

• Aperol,
• lemon juice, and
• light beer (traditionally Miller High Life).

What’s with the name?

The drink was invented in 2016 at Wet City Brewery in Baltimore by bartender Reed Cahill. The name apparently refers to the character Spagett from the “Tim and Eric Awesome Show” on Adult Swim. We’re not sure of the exact connection with Aperol and beer, but the mysterious name makes the drink even more fun. (Let us know if you have any ideas!)

Adjust the Aperol as desired

The Spaghett is barely a cocktail recipe at all: simply take a swig out of the beer bottle, then add lemon juice and Aperol. We tried this recipe with various quantities of Aperol, and found the following:

• Use 1 ounce Aperol for a sublty sweet finish. This version of the drink tastes like light beer that’s subtly sweet and citrusy. It’s very refreshing and has a nuanced flavor.
• Use 1 ½ ounces Aperol for a bolder flavor. This tastes more like an actual cocktail, with a more pronounced sweet citrus flavor from the liqueur.

The second one was my favorite, since it tasted like more of a finished cocktail, whereas Alex liked the subtler flavor with 1 ounce Aperol.

More about Aperol

Aperol is a Italian liqueur that’s an aperitif: a liquor designed for sipping before a meal. It’s considered an Italian amaro or bitter (amaro means “little bitter”), but it’s the sweetest in the family. It was invented in Padua, Italy in 1919 by brothers Luigi and Silvio Barbieri. The company that sells Campari, Gruppo Campari, bought Aperol in the 1990s.

Aperol is bright orange in color and it has a sweet, citrusy flavor, whereas its cousin liqueur Campari is bright red and extremely bitter. In fact, Italian liqueurs are more different than they are alike: see Campari vs Aperol.

Can you use Campari in a Spaghett? We wouldn’t recommend it. The bitter flavor of Campari would be too stark of a contrast against the light beer.

More Aperol cocktails

And that’s it! Let us know if you try the Spaghett and what you think. Here are a few of the more popular Aperol cocktails to use up a bottle:

• Make a Aperol Spritz, aka Spritz Veneziano
• Go for an Aperol Negroni
• Opt for modern classics, the Paper Plane or Naked and Famous
• Try these Top 10 Aperol Cocktails

01

Aperol Spritz

02

Aperol Negroni

03

Naked and Famous Cocktail

04

12 Popular Aperol Cocktails

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