Red Eye
ClassicBeer and tomato juice — the savory morning-after pint made famous on screen.
Savory, light and restorative. Tomato juice gives the lager body and a rounded, umami-tinged base, a dash of hot sauce and salt wake it up, and the beer keeps it cold and thin enough to drink easily. Less spiced than a Michelada, more beer-forward — a gentle savory pint rather than a full meal in a glass.
Ingredients
- 6 oz Tomato Juice
- 2 dashes Hot Sauce
- 12 oz Lager
- 1 pinch Salt
- Lime wedge · optional garnish
Method
- 1
Pour the tomato juice into a chilled pint glass.
- 2
Add the hot sauce and a small pinch of salt.
- 3
Top slowly with cold lager, tilting the glass to keep the head gentle.
- 4
Stir once and garnish with a lime wedge.
The Story
The Red Eye is the beer world's morning-after cure — a lager cut with tomato juice, close kin to the Michelada but simpler and more northern in feel. It earned its widest fame in the 1988 film *Cocktail*, where Tom Cruise's bartender prescribes one (in the rowdier telling, complete with a raw egg cracked in) as a hangover fix, cementing its reputation as a hair-of-the-dog. Stripped of the theatrics, it is exactly what it sounds like: a savory, low-strength pint built for a slow, restorative brunch rather than a big night out.
Recipe card
The whole recipe in one shareable image.
