Red Beer Is the Midwest’s Cult-Favorite Morning Beverage

It’s 10:30 a.m. outside of Memorial Stadium in Lincoln, Nebraska — home of the University of Nebraska Cornhuskers — but plenty of people here have already had a few alcoholic beverages, as indicated by the difficulty some have controlling the volume of their voices. Technically the area around the stadium is dry, but every group in sight in this parking lot has a cooler full of light beer, and many are also toting a bottle of tomato juice or bloody mary mix — though neither are intended for bloody marys. They’re for red beer, the michelada’s bland but mysterious Midwestern cousin: light domestic beer mixed with a healthy blob of tomato juice.

“Beer isn’t the best-tasting thing at eight in the morning,” said Scott Vonderharr, who drove down from Omaha for a tailgate. “If you’re gonna have a drink, I like to put a little tomato juice in it.”

Red beer is well-known in Nebraska, but its origins are unclear; a local historical society’s menu collection lacks any mention of it. Hypotheses abound, though: Vonderharr’s view on palatability in the morning is one theory why red beer exists; another is that it’s good for hangovers. Some drink it because they want to add flavor to the notoriously flavorless light beers they have on hand. A more cynical take theorizes that tomato juice companies used red beer as a marketing tool.

On this particular sunny morning outside Memorial Stadium, the binge-drinking is fueled by optimism: After years of stagnation, the world is the Huskers’ oyster. Many people sport red shirts with slogans hailing Scott Frost, the new coach who led the team to national glory as a quarterback in the ’90s. Other shirts say “Make Nebraska Great Again.”

Red beer’s thematic coloring leads many Nebraskans to think it’s a product of the tailgates, but the drink is more widespread than that: In different areas of the Midwest and West, a red beer can also be known as a red eye, red rooster, red draw, bloody beer, or Montana mary. At a dive bar or a steakhouse you can get one without fuss; a bartender at a more upscale place, if they agree to mix one for you, might serve it with a side of condescension.

Like many other beloved regional dishes, the progenitor of red beer is unclear, but the simplest version of red beer’s murky origin story is that it was imported from Mexican drinking culture. Micheladas, or beer flavored with a combination of tomato juice, lime, salt, and various spices, sauces, and seasonings, are one of the most popular alcoholic drinks in Mexico, and well-known to taco lovers and brunch-goers in America’s cities.

According to legend, the michelada was invented as a hangover cure by a bartender at Potosino Sports Club in San Luis Potosí in the 1960s, and its ingredients vary by region. It can be as simple as salt and lemon, or it can include bouillon powder, chamoy, tomato juice, or Clamato. (Major brewers have been attuned to the drink’s appeal for some time: Anheuser-Busch sells a beer pre-mixed with Clamato, salt, and lime.)

Pouring and drinking a pitcher of red beer at Neighber’s bar in Omaha

Red beer could also be, like many other tomato-based drinks, simply a case of convergent mixology. By the early 20th century, tomato-based drinks were on the rise: Louis Perrin created what’s considered to be the first tomato juice cocktail in 1917, and Fernand Petiot is largely credited with creating the bloody mary in Paris in 1921. The ascendancy of such drinks was assisted by the invention of canned tomato juice in the 1920s. The Bloody Caesar — a stripped-down version of the bloody mary with clam juice — took Canada by storm in the 1970s. Red beer seems to have emerged somewhere in the midst of all these other beverage inventions: EV Durling, a nationally syndicated newspaper columnist from New York, was puzzled by a man ordering beer and tomato juice in 1946. “When I saw him drink it, I shuddered,” he wrote.

Midwesterners usually add tomato juice to Michelob, Keystone, Bud Light, or Busch Light (often referred to by bros as “Busch Latté”), and they don’t adhere to a standard for the ratio of beer to “red,” leaving it up to drinkers’ individual tastes. “You know why I drank it in college?” asked tailgater Dale Lefferts. “Because it gives you the runs! It cleans you out.”

Lefferts said he only puts a splash of beer in a glass that’s “three-quarters red,” to be consumed with lunch. His digestive theory goes along with the convention among Nebraskans that it’s a drink best suited for the morning.

From the street, the Neighber’s bar in Omaha looks like a suburban version of the false-front architecture of Western films. At 6:30 a.m., it’s quiet inside — just three men drinking alone. One animatedly plays video games on a touchscreen system. Another sits quietly with a Busch Light and a pack of menthol cigarettes, while the other sips on a clear mixed drink.

“[This early], it’s usually a couple of regulars, older guys,” says Josh Bruckner, the son of Neighber’s owner, on the bar’s typical morning clientele. He’s been working mornings here for seven years. “The shift lets out at the hospital over here about 7 to 7:30, then we usually see a big rush of nurses,” he says, referring to the University of Nebraska Medical Center. Sure enough, by 7:30 a.m., there’s a group of nurses in scrubs drinking bottles of Busch Light.

Leah Warren, one of the nurses, takes sips directly from a mini-pitcher of red beer. It’ll set her back $4.50: $4.25 for “whatever light beer Josh pours,” and a quarter for the “red.”

“It’s kind of like breakfast in a cup,” she says. On the way out of Neighber’s, patrons can grab a paper cup of joe from a drip coffee machine before facing the morning traffic on Saddle Creek Road.

Despite its popularity, a lot of beer drinkers have never heard of red beer, or simply don’t care for it. Darrell Smith, the executive director of the American Breweriana Association, a group of beer aficionados, didn’t know what red beer was; Bill Baburek, the owner of Crescent Moon, one of the oldest craft beer bars in Omaha, isn’t a fan.

“We went to Chicago and when we ordered a red beer, they looked at us and were like, ‘What? What is that?’” said Tina Meeske, a hairdresser from Lincoln, over a red beer at the Railyard, an outdoor drinking hall near Lincoln.

Chris Hernstrom, master brewer at Bolo Beer Co. in Valentine, Nebraska, says red beer’s popularity in the Great Plains might have to do with the historical unavailability of more flavorful beers in small towns. For the older generation, especially in rural Nebraska where it would be rare to see anything but light domestics on the menu, red beer is a way to get a drink with more flavor and depth.

”It’s still relatively hard to find tap beer in a lot of small towns,” Hernstrom said. “Nobody uses a microbrew with a red beer. But almost everywhere has Busch Light or Bud Light.”

Part of the drink’s appeal is also the adjustability of the tomato-to-beer ratio: Some red beer drinkers are just beginning to consume alcohol, while others use it — much like a bloody mary — as the hair of the dog. Tailgater Lefferts claims his red-heavy beer is better for hangovers, while bartender Bruckner says patrons ordering red beer often cite a hungover need for vitamins.

Outside Memorial Stadium, Christine Kupfer said her grandmother likes red beer at any time of the day. “My grandma is 85, and every time we go out to dinner, she orders a red beer,” she said. “Old people like red beer, young people like red beer. Boys like red beer, girls like red beer. Everyone likes red beer. Unless you don’t like tomato juice.”

Jahd Khalil is a radio and print journalist based in Cairo, Egypt. Photographer Alex Matzke is currently based in Omaha focused on Community Building and Mentorship.
Editor: Erin DeJesus