Hell hath no fury like a hottie scorned.

If, this Valentine’s Day, your girl is pounding Public House’s Bitter Hottie instead of knocking back Bay Breezes and expensive Champagne, you sir, have a keeper. A keeper who probably needs a White Russian chaser to calm down her on-fire tastebuds, but a keeper nonetheless.

The Venetian’s beer bar got rid of the lousy parts of the Bloody Mary (tomato juice, cheap vodka, too many vegetables, those heathens who throw clam juice in a cocktail) and kept it strictly to the good parts (spicy, salty, boozy).

Drop a little Sirracha into a tulip glass rimmed with celery salt. Mix with a squeeze of lime and top with Tenaya Creek IPA. Cocktail over.

“You’re getting that IPA with the spice, but it changes the spice,” Public House’s cicerone, Russell Gardner said. “IPA and hot foods, they clash, but they clash in a good way. If you’re eating spicy Thai food, and you drink an IPA, that spicy Thai food got a lot spicier, and that bitter IPA got a lot more bitter. When you add that Sirracha in there it really elevates the bitterness. It brings the difference in taste right to your palate. … it adds another layer.”

The drink hits with a big spicy kick up front before easing off, and as the IPA washes over your tongue, there’s a secondary, more subtle heat. That, Gardner said, is less from the Sirracha than the ale itself.

“That second heat is all hops. That’s that bitterness. It’s really the bitterness playing off the heat. It’s really pulling your palate in a couple different directions.”

All we know is that it’ll take someone truly daring (or masochistic) to pair this with a really cranked up plate of wings. Someone get Kobayashi on the case, immediately.

By Jason Scavone

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