NASHUA — The michelada is not for the faint of palate. It’s a beer drink infused with Clamato, four different sauces, two spice mixtures and lime, and in the case of El Paisano’s Mexican restaurant on Palm Street, the micheladas are available with shrimp.

“What we have here is the michelada, which is unique and typical of El Paisano restaurant,” said Angelica Avalos, the face of the restaurant and maker of these heavy beer cocktails.

“It’s a very tasty drink, very tasty, and most of the customers that come here ask for it,” she said, serving up one of the drinks with Corona in a large, chilled mug.

“When you drink beer by itself, you get a bitter aftertaste,” Avalos said. “When you drink the michelada it’s agreeable as it takes away the strength of the beer.”

Clamato—which is made of tomato juice concentrate, spices, and clam broth—is the most important ingredient second to the lager.

“The michelada has the taste of tomato,” said Agustin Avalos, the brother of Angelica. “The taste of salsa, very tasty, very different from what you drink. Even the taste of seafood.”

The micheladas at Paisano’s are made to order, with drinkers able to specify how spicy and what kind of beer. But the most bold ingredient that splits drinkers into two camps is dehydrated shrimp.

The shrimp in the michelada, sold in Latin shops as “camarón seco,” consists of everything from the eyes to the shell and tail. They are used in dishes from China and Southeast Asia all the way to New Orleans, where they’re key to certain gumbo recipes.

“It’s a taste that gives you the inspiration to drink another, then another,” Avalos said.

Angelica Avalos said it’s this drink that distinguishes the restaurant she’s worked at for two years from other Mexican places in the area. But it’s also the restaurant that boasts more home-style cooking than all the others. For 50 cents extra, tortillas made by hand are available, something common in Mexico but hard to come by in Tex-Mex places in the U.S.

Juan Iñiguez sat drinking beer at Paisano’s on an early Wednesday afternoon.

He said he lived close by, but would still come to the restaurant if he lived far away. “I like the flavors and the tastes here,” he said. “I don’t know what it has, but it has something. It’s more natural, with fresher ingredients.”

Not only is the food tastier here, Iñiguez said, the prices are cheaper too.

The restaurant offers different salsas with each meal, with certain dishes calling for a tomatillo accompaniment and others for a barbecue salsa made from dried chili peppers.

Big beer companies in the U.S. have made attempts at commercializing the michelada. Miller offers the Chill, with salt and lime, as Anheuser Busch made a crack at the market with the Budweiser & Clamato Chelada. The drink, also available with Bud Light, is popular among Bloody Mary fans. But compared with the michelada of Angelica Avalos, these drinks are hardly deserving of the name.

In Nashua, micheladas are mostly available in Mexican-owned restaurants, but not in places like Shorty’s, Margaritas, and La Hacienda. La Carreta and Tacos Colima, on the other hand, do offer the drink. At El Paisano they go for $5.

“Workers from other Mexican restaurants come to ask what we put in the michelada,” Angelica Avalos said. “We tell them the ingredients, but they can never make it the same. So they come here to drink their micheladas.”

But perhaps there is a difference, Avalos smiled. “The only one is that here we make it with a lot of love.”

Michelada ingredients:

12 ounces lager beer: Corona, Dos Equis, etc. 3 ounces of Clamato 3 or 4 drops of Maggi Seasoning Sauce 3 or 4 drops of soy sauce 3 or 4 drops of Worcestershire sauce 3 or 4 drops of Tabasco Sauce Tajín Fruit Seasoning to taste Valentina Chile and Lime Seasoning to taste Half a lime, squeezed Dehydrated shrimp (optional) available in most Asian and Mexican food shops Served on the rocks in a chilled mug with salt around the rim.