If you hate Chelada, it is probably because you haven’t tried to taste the different flavors available. Chelada, like other tomato juice based cocktail beers, is fucking incredible in a 50°-90° weather. I agree, lemon chelada from Sol beer does not taste like the regular Modelo Chelada. In addition, if the chelada is probably too salty, not everyone will like it. In this article, I will show you how to make a chelada drink that you won’t ever forget.
I have made a pretty good recipe for Chavela, and Michelada and now Chelada. They are all soul refreshing combo in both hot and humid weather. They taste a bit different but make excellent cocktail drinks on a sunny day.
What is Chelada beer?
Chelada is simply a more traditional Mexican beer or beverage, also called cerveza preparada, which is made from light beer, lime juice, and salt. The ingredients for preparing the Chelada are not as many as for other cocktail recipes.
Under the scorching sun or hot summer day, Chelada is a highly refreshing cocktail. Moreover, the low alcoholic content of the Mexican chelada beer can help to alleviate the discomforting effects of severe hangover from whisky.
A friend of mine visited me in early 2020, immediately after the Christmas holidays. We could not resist the temptation to share some crazy moments at home, heavily drinking beer. To dilute the alcohol that we drank and to reduce dizziness, nausea and headache the next day, my wife prepared us a low alcohol Modelo Chelada.
What does Chelada stand for, anyway?
You have seen what is chelada beer – that Chelada is a low alcohol Mexican drink. But how did the chelada Mexico drink get its name? The name roots from the Spanish word “chela” meaning beer. People in Mexico and some Latin American countries use “chela” to mean cerveza beer.
Chela also somehow means lager or light beer, or a blonde – a more feminine way to describe a low alcoholic beer. When served cold, the “Chela” and “helada” combine to form “Chelada”, where the “helada” is another Spanish word for cold or frost.
The name Chelada therefore means cold beer cocktail, derived from combining slang words. Some people even call it chilada beer or simply chiladas. The accent isn’t the problem, anyway.
Compared to gin, whisky, vodka and others, Chelada causes less hangover. In fact, it is a diet drink for someone who’s counting calories.
how to make a Chelada beer recipes
You can make your chelada easily and quickly at home. It does not have the Bloody Mary mix, or need the clamato or homegrown juiced tomatoes like the chavela and the Micheladas. Let us see how to make chelada beer recipe.
Chelada Ingredients : What does a chelada have in it?
The main thing that chelada contains is beer, lime juice and salt. The choices of beer, the citrus fruit and the type of salt matter a lot in the flavor you will get.
1.Cold beer (Modelo, Bud Light, Sol)
The best alcohol chelada drink is made with cerveza clara beer. Modelo is a pilsner-like lager that most people prefer. When buying the Cerveza, go for the light bright and crisp, not the dark lager like Cerveza oscura. If you got none, your choice of beer for your chelada should closely resemble a refreshing golden Mexican lager beer. The Sol chelada beer has a different flavor from Modelo Cheleda and Bud Light Chelada.
2. Fresh lime or lemon juice
1 lime is ok for each chelada drink but it depends on the flavor you want. I haven’t tried the organic lime juice from Amazon store, but it is a better alternative if you have no fruit.
3. Rim Salt (tajin)
Tajin is a chile pepper based lime seasoning, with good quality. You can also use the chile, lime salt for rimming the glass of Michelada cocktail.
4. Ice cubes
If your beer is not chilled, a few cubes of ice can keep the whole glass refreshing. Although Chelada beer does not use ice cubes, you can add some ice to preserve its freshness and richness in hot weather. If you have your lager nicely chilled, there wouldn’t be need for ice again. In another case, if your beer is a hard liquor, adding ice to the beer cocktail is necessary too.
Traditional Chelada Recipe : How do you make a chelada drink?
The process to mix a chelada cocktail beer is pretty simple, straightforward.
Step 1: Cut a slice of lime fruit and wet the rim of the bee glass.
Step 2: Pour out some salt into a shallow plate
Step 3: Dip the wet rim of the glass into the salt and make sure the coarse salt stick to the rim
Step 4: Gradually press or squeeze some lime, allowing the juice to drop into the glass. A juicer machine is a better tool to extract the juice from the lime or lemon.
Step 5: Sprinkle salt lightly into the cup. A pinch of salt is ok.
Step 6: Fill the glass with your favorite beer. Probably, the cub can’t take a whole bottle of beer. In that case, you can divide the beer between two glass cups. As you pour the beer, foaming develop.
Step 7: Stop pouring the beer when it reaches the salted rim of the glass.
Step 8: Wait a few seconds, let the foam disappear, then top the glass with the extra beer
Step 9: Cut out another slice of lime for garnishing.
Tools for making Chelada
- A drink ware or glass cup
- A Juice machine to press the lime. A handy stainless steel Citrus fruit (Lime or Lemon) Squeezer is much affordable.
How to make Budweiser Chelada drink
Another variation of chelada is the Bud Light Chelada, made purely with Bud light beer and Clamato juice. Although the Chelada has origin in Mexico, many variations include hot sauce, and the tomato-based juice into your recipe, in addition to the traditional beer, salt and lime juice.
Ingredients of Budweiser Chelada
- 12 ounces of chilled Budweiser beer
- Cold limit juice
- Lime juice
- Tabasco sauce
- Worcestershire sauce
- Salt
how to make the Budweiser Chelada with Clamato
- Wet the rim of the glass with lime, and dip the cup inside the Tajin salt. Make sure it sticks to the wet rim.
- Drop in the tabasco sauce, the Worcestershire sauce, the lime juice and the Clamato juice.
- Lastly, gently pour in your bottle of Budweiser beer into the mixture
- Stir gently, and add a slice of lime to garnish.
Read More: If I double a bread recipe, do I double the yeast too?
How to make a Bud Light Chelada with Clamato?
You can also make chelada with a refreshing taste of Bud Light and with the richness of a Clamato tomato cocktail.
What are the ingredients in a Bud Light Chelada drink? The main ingredient when making bud light clamato chelada is the bud light beer. Bud light chelada combines your favorite beer with lime juice, Clamato juice, Worcestershire sauce, and a pinch of salt and tabasco sauce.
You can follow the same procedure to make the traditional chelada above, but instead of modelo beer, you add but the bud light beer.
But light clamato chelada in canned containers contains water , Clamato Concentrate (mixture of tomato juice and clam juice), barley malt , rice , and hops . This is simply a derivative of the traditional chelada cocktail beer.
What is the alcohol content of Bud Light Chelada? Mixing bud light & Clamato chelada produces about 3-5 % alcohol.
Chelada beer taste
Chelada Mexican beer tastes depending on how much salt and lime juice you add into the mixture. The Chelada beer cocktail is flavorful thanks to the combination of salt and beer.
The light salinity and the beer flavor are what give that vibrant taste, and when it is served cold or chilled, the refreshing flavors, and sometimes the sour lime, produce a stronger mouth-watering sip. It is fragrant but not mouth puckering!
For texture, Chelada looks like beer, almost a little tiny like bloody-Mary but without that viscous or thick texture from the clamato tomato juice. In just a few gulps, chelada is a remarkable hangover cure.
How do you make Bud Light Chelada taste better?
You can make use of vegetables like cucumber to get really good flavor. Here is a video on how to make chelada taste better.
Nutritional information – I serving of chelada
Chelada provides at least 140 calories, enough sodium salts, sugar, and a little protein. Carbohydrate is also high. What is completely lacking in the chelada is the fat (trans fat, unsaturated fat, saturated fat) and cholesterol.
Variations of Chelada mixed with clamato will contain potassium and other mineral, plus vitamin C and more. Including hot sauce, and Worcestershire sauce will mean the resulting drink has more sodium.
If not because of sodium, chelada could be a better diet cocktail for people with high blood pressure.
What is the difference between a Chelada and a Michelada?
At first, I often confuse the Chelada beer with Michelada. The real difference between Michelada and Chelada lies in the ingredients and texture.
Mixing a light beer cocktail with lime juice and salt produces a Chelada, which will assume the color close to that of your beer. Moreover, traditional Chelada has a light texture as usual beer does.
Michelada, on the other hand contains the same beer, lime and salt, in addition to tomato juice, hot sauce and Worcestershire. The texture of Michelada is thicker than that of Chelada.
In simple terms, if you add tomato juice, or bloody-Mary, hot sauce and Worcestershire to Chelada drink, you will come out with Michelada.
Read : Chelada Vs Michelada
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