Welcome To Wonkette Happy Hour, With This Week’s Cocktail, Guinness Punch!

The perfect start to a Halloween bar crawl.

Not exactly pretty, but it smells wonderful.

Greetings, Wonketeers! I’m Hooper, your bartender. I have to confess, I sometimes feel like I’m in a rut. I make a lot of drinks that blur together as the night rolls on at the bar. When I write about cocktails, sometimes the margaritas and Mai Tais all feel the same. But just when I thought I’d seen it all, something utterly unexpected crosses my desk. How does a breakfast cocktail made with Guinness and sweetened condensed milk strike you? Let’s make a Guinness Punch. Here’s the recipe.

Guinness Punch

1 can Guinness beer (14.5 oz)

1 cup whole milk

½ cup sweetened condensed milk

½ cup quick oats

1 tsp vanilla extract

½ tsp ground nutmeg

½ tsp ground cinnamon

Pinch of salt

Combine all ingredients and refrigerate overnight. The next morning, pour the mixture into a blender and blend on high speed until smooth. Serve over ice.

Surprisingly, this isn’t an Irish recipe — it’s Jamaican. Some of the best Jamaican classic recipes reflect the island’s history as an English colony. Soft buns filled with guava paste, Indian curries laden with turmeric and Scotch bonnet peppers, Christmas cakes made with dried fruit and fiery Jamaican rum — the island’s history is written all over the dinner table. The latest cultural wave to impact Jamaican cuisine is Ital, a Rastafarian interpretation of a vegan diet. Local cuisines always grow and change. In Mexico, you can find taco recipes rooted in Aztec cuisine. You can also drink micheladas topped with gummy bears. “Real” local food is always a moving target.

Guinness beer has passed through Jamaica to foreign ports for centuries. It’s no surprise that the locals have taken a shine to it, even if they drink it in some unique ways. In 1801, Guinness started shipping beer to the Caribbean. The stout survived the trip from Ireland to the Caribbean; Guinness brewed a special “West Indies Porter” with extra hops and extra booze that locals loved. “Guinness punch” was a quick, simple version of the punch plantation owners served hot — something to keep blue-collar workers moving through the day.

In 2026, you can find quick-and-dirty versions of Guinness Punch that incorporate Supligen, a breakfast drink that reminds me of Carnation Instant Breakfast. I’m not an enthusiastic fan of using canned who-knows-what in my cocktails, even if it is supposed to be healthy. This version came from Andre Fowles, author of My Jamaican Table (Wonkette affiliate link). His version skips the overnight wait, but I found that letting the cocktail sit helps the oats soften and puree more smoothly. I think the oats might be Mr. Fowles’s innovation, but I definitely enjoy the heartiness they add to the drink ... even if I sometimes end up chewing the beverage.

Beer for breakfast is certainly … a choice, but not quite as strange as it might seem. A low-proof radler with raspberry syrup is a classic light, refreshing German sipper. Craft breweries have been happily cranking out breakfast-flavored beer for quite some time. It’s not hard to find a bacon-flavored beer, and I’ve seen breakfast cereal-flavored beers on the shelves. I’d be remiss not to mention Brewnuts, a Cleveland institution where you can buy quality craft donuts and craft beer under the same roof. But in the end, I like how this cocktail approaches the whole “beer for breakfast” conundrum. Hearty, bittersweet Guinness melts into the sweet dairy and heavy oats to make a drink that shouldn’t taste good, but somehow goes down easy. As my wife says, “breakfast food is food you eat at breakfast time.” I suppose the same goes for breakfast beverages.

Let’s talk ingredients:

Ingredient shot. You know what spices look like.

Guinness Beer: Any solid stout, like Left Hand’s Milk Stout Nitro, works great here. Founders makes a coffee-flavored oatmeal breakfast stout that would be amazing.

Whole milk: Use whatever milk substitute you like. Almond or oat milk would be great choices.

Sweetened condensed milk: I am an absolute sucker for sweetened condensed milk; I’ll eat it by the spoonful if given the chance. Surprisingly, vegan alternatives to sweetened condensed milk are also extremely tasty and work well in most recipes. Use whatever works for your diet.

Quick Oats: Quick oats are simply oats that have been chopped up to make them cook more quickly. They’re an ideal choice for this recipe. Don’t use whole oats unless you want to give your blender a workout.

Spices: The fresher the better. Accept no substitutes.

My home bar is Hemingway’s Underground, the hottest cocktail bar in pretty little Medina, Ohio. I’m behind the stick Wednesday-Saturday, 4-10. Last call’s at midnight. Swing on by, and I’ll make this drink for you… or anything else from our little Happy Hour here at Wonkette. We’ll make it through this together.

OPEN THREAD!