We’ve had this novelty bottle of fermented mare’s milk in the office all week, and we’ve been chipping bits off it in the afternoon to combat the heat. And let me tell you, there’s little as refreshing as a warm mug of fermented horse milk on a blazing summer’s afternoon. However, we drank the last sour mouthful of that yesterday and were forced to go looking for other ways to beat the heat. So: beer cocktails. All the refreshing, fizzy power of beer, juiced up with a gut-punch of various spirits. First stop, Handle Bar on Yongkang Lu. This week they put six beer cocktails on the menu, ranging from 40-60rmb. We tried three. This is the first one, the “Cider, House Rules”: Plus 46 pear cider, Jim Beam, Watson’s lime cordial and a handful of mint. Pretty nice. Much nicer than pear cider. Not so sweet. Refreshing. Can’t really taste the bourbon but nevertheless it gets a thumbs up. This one’s called a “Strip and Go Naked”. She’s a cheeky mix of Stella, Smirnoff and Watson’s lime cordial. Looks like this: Tastes super sour, really citric. If you like that, shoot for this one. Boozy? Not so boozy. Doesn’t really taste strong. Like a very sour glass of shandy. Necked it pretty fast. And to our final dalliance with Handlebar’s summer boozage, the “Yongkang Social Club”. Gosling’s dark rum, triple sec, grapefruit bitters and lime cordial poured over a Stella. This one’s a lot stronger. That Gosling’s isn’t messing around. Drink this when the sun’s going down and things are getting real. No more candy-assed lager and lemonade for us. Still, it looks good and was refreshing — more refreshing than any of its parts. If you’re tiring of drinking pint after pint of lager then any of these would do you well. A bit lighter than a glass of beer, but with more alcohol. Next UP, the Tap House, just down the street. From today, they have 21 beer cocktails on their menu. This is how they work it: you get a small glass of beer, one of the many they have on tap, plus a shot of something to pour or drop into it. Shot and a beer go from 35-60rmb depending on the premiumality of the hooch. They come served on these wooden pallets, and if you buy four or eight at a go, they come on hefty long slabs of wood — plus the price comes down when you buy in bulk. I tried the following four: the Dr Pepper (lager and amaretto), the Spicy Scott (5am Saint and spiced rum), Purple Snow (Yellow Snow and casis) and Fruit and Nut (chocolate stout, amaretto and casis). All that came in at 160rmb. The Dr Pepper is quite a classic beer cocktail and recipes often include co-cola. Tap House also has a flaming version, which comes and with white rum and flames. This one tasted pretty good. Indeed, it was a bit like the good doctor. Spicy Scott was my favorite. Tasted like scotch and beer, which is a good combo, even though this was rum. The other two… Well, we’re fuzzy on those. By this point my workload was taking its toll. My notes just say: “Maybe it's the beer talking Marge, but you've got a butt that won't quit. They got these big chewey pretzels here... mmymhghugrunm... Five dollars?! Get outta here.” I think they tasted OK. Not really so refreshing — head to Handlebar for refreshing. These are more in the getting-pissed-in-a-hurry department. Unfortunately, neither of these places (nowhere in town, to the best of my knowledge) do a beer cocktail called Hangman’s Blood, which is a saucy little blend of rum, gin, brandy and porter (which is a type of British beer), served in a pint glass. It was a beverage much loved by the author Anthony Burgess who used to top his up with champagne. For other beer cocktails in Shanghai, you pretty much have to go Japanese. Constellation 1 has a few right at the back of the menu. Not many people make it all the way back there. There’s too much temptation up front. I went for the Dog’s Nose, that’s a mix of gin and Asahi. Sounds pretty horrible, right? The sort of thing you might make at 3am when all you’ve got in the house is half a bottle of Gordon’s and a warm Suntory Blue. In truth, it tastes OK, like a beer with a little bite at the end, though it’s not the finest thing to do to either a chilled Asahi or a nice nip of gin. My guess is that if you’re drinking this, you’re probably only in it for shits and giggles, or you’d already had a skinful. I’m afraid I was very drunk by this point. Constellation is an altogether classier place to mix beer with spirits. The guy next to me at the bar was reading a magazine about expensive watches. On the back of the magazine there was an advert for Mont Blanc with Nicolas Cage’s face. You may have seen it… This image is all over the place in China. That cheeseball grin. That weird hair. Those strangely disconcerting eyes. There’s one on the side of a building on Nanjing Xi Lu that’s six stories high. I think Shanghai is turning into a shrine to Nicholas Cage. He’s some kind of god figure to the Chinese people. My local DVD store has a whole room set aside just for his movies. I tried to strike up a conversation with my neighbor about Cage’s face but he ignored me. In truth, he might not even have been there. By this point I was pretty far gone. No matter, let’s end on a high note. We'll play you out with Not the Bees, just so we're all on the same page about Nicolas Cage and what should be done to the man's face. Cheers!