How Baltimore accidentally invented the Spagett, one of summer’s hottest cocktails

Chances are you know what an Aperol spritz is — you’ve probably even drunk a few this summer. And if you follow drinking culture, you might know what a Spagett is: a version of the Aperol spritz using a Miller High Life beer that was invented right here in Baltimore and has since garnered national fame.

Bartender Reed Cahill first came up with the drink at Wet City, and he has seen it take on a cult following, including Spaghetts of NYC, an Instagram page dedicated to trying bars’ twists on the concoction in the Big Apple. Cahill, who hasn’t ordered the Spagett “in a long time,” said he even personally saw it on a menu in Iceland.

“That’s when I knew [it was global],” said Cahill, who realized then that the drink would define him forever. “I was like, ‘I’m toast. It doesn’t matter what I do for the rest of my life.’”

Cahill created the drink 10 years ago by using Miller High Life — advertised as the champagne of beers — instead of the typical Prosecco base in an Aperol spritz. The drink was made right in the glass Miller bottle by pouring about an ounce out of the beer, replacing that amount with the orange Italian aperitivo Aperol and topping it with fresh lemon juice. The cheap, refreshing, then-$5 drink became known to regulars who frequented the Mount Vernon brewery operated by brothers PJ and Josh Sullivan.

“It was a patio pounder,” Cahill said, referring to an easy drink you can enjoy outdoors. “Frankly [it was] a dumb idea, but admittedly it’s simple and it’s delicious.”

The small Baltimore drink blew up three years later when Bon Appétit published an article about the drink by Alex Delaney, who called it “the official drink of summer.” Google searches for the drink jumped a whopping 5,000% that year, and the search for the cocktail in a beer bottle has seen spikes in interest in the decade since as other publications like The Washington Post and Food and Wine discovered it. To honor the cocktail’s fame, Wet City celebrates Spagett day annually on Aug. 6, the anniversary of the Bon Appetit article.

The debate over the spelling of the drink — named after a character in a skit from “Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!” — has followed its rise in fame, but Wet City’s PJ Sullivan, who spells it true to the character with no ‘h,’ says the spelling doesn’t matter.

“You can spell it, make it anyway you want,” Sullivan said.

Despite the fact Wet City brews its own sours and IPAs, the brewery team used Miller High Life for the Spagett because it “was our go-to of sorts,” Cahill said — the easy beer the team drank post-shift. “Pretty much everything else we were stocking at the time was super craft and fancy. We wanted to make sure that we had a beer-flavored beer option on a menu so that we could still be a chill industry neighborhood spot.”

There have been small variations in how the drink is served in the many social videos and recipes that followed the drink’s initial fame. At Melanie’s at Griffith’s Tavern in Hampden, the drink is called the “Low Life,” though co-owner Allison Crowley says Spagett is always acceptable.

It was the drink of choice for Crowley and her business partner Hannah Spangler, who drank the concoction while making renovations to their bar ahead of opening in 2022. The drink at Mel’s is a collaboration between bartender and patron: Upon ordering, the customer takes a drink of the 12-ounce bottle and, with sanitary precautions, the bartender pours room-temperature Aperol into the bottle to fill the gap and garnishes it with a lemon slice.

At Royal Blue Tavern, the Spagett is made behind the bar, but served alongside a shot of the beer that’s been poured out, both for presentation and to avoid waste, according to bartender Matthew Marcum.

Although Cahill left after a year of working at Wet City to move to the West Coast to open NoMad Los Angeles and is now an aspiring attorney, the fame from the Spagett follows him in Baltimore and beyond.

“I like to joke that it’s like the albatross around my neck and will like go on my tombstone at this point,” Cahill said, “but you don’t get to choose what ends up going viral.”