Cooking with Beer: Beer Brats

Surprise, surprise, when it is my turn to cook, I am starting to experiment with using beer as an ingredient. Beer can be used in cooking most any kind of food: stews, vegetables, breads, sauces, desserts, and, most often, meat. It is most useful in the last case since beer helps to sanitize, tenderize, and flavor meat. I will be sure to report back on the successes as I play around with cooking with beer. My first attempt this past weekend was a definite victory: bratwurst cooked in porter.

(I adapted this recipe from one I found off of a decent list of beer recipies at About.com.)


Beer Brats

Ingredients:
1/2 bottle of porter
5 bratwurst sausages
1 large sweet onion
2 tsp butter and/or olive oil

Preparation:
Brown bratwurst in butter until golden brown. Chop onion into rings and saute in remaining butter and olive oil. Once onions are limp and golden add the brats and the beer. Cook at medium heat for about 15 minutes, or until liquid is reduced to syrup. To keep the sausage juicy, I continually spooned the porter over the brats as they were cooking. Serve on bun or as side along with carmelized onions and remaining sauce.

The beer:
I used my homebrewed Promised Land Porter to cook the brats in. I would recommend a dark beer (porter, bock...) but I have seen brats cooked with just about every mass-brewed lager. Really, any beer will give the brats more flavor than cooking them in water. Dark, malty beers with high alcohol are really ideal, while hoppy beers are more difficult to cook with. My porter worked well to flavor the brats, and the remaining sauce and carmelized onions were especially tasty. Enjoy!

Watch City Seasonals

The activity of the weekend was trying tapas for the first time at Solea Restaurant and Tapas Bar in Waltham. It was quite fun, and definitely recommended. Most shockingly, it was even the highlight of the night over one of my favorite local breweries: Watch City. While the brewery had a new range of seasonals as always, each beer fell a little flat...

Watch City Biking Bob's Bohemian Pilsner

Sample -- Watch City Brewery, Waltham

dark color for a pilsner for sure. aroma is of sweet, candied apples. flavor is mostly sweet grains with some light grassy hops. i found nothing really appealing about this beer but it is worth noting that my friend dan had this rated significantly higher.

Score: 4

Watch City Bombed Blondeshelle Belgian Strong Ale

Sample -- Watch City

note: sold to me as a belgian strong ale, recorded on beer advocate as a tripel... appearance is a hazy orange and aroma is floral hops and again candy-sweet malts. yeast and skunky wheat form backbone of flavor, but powerful alcohol overwhelms both. 10% plus was too much for this brew...
Score: 5

Watch City Pie Eyed Pumpkin Ale

Sample -- Watch City

if you like heavily spiced pumpkin ales, this is a pretty good standard for the style. cinnamon, nutmeg, even ginger (i think) make their presence known in both aroma and taste. pumpkin is pushed to back of taste but is there. drinkable, as most pumpkin ales are.

Score: 6

Prolific Beer Blogger Now Based in Brockton

I was a little surprised to find my name in my local paper, The Brockton Enterprise, a couple of weeks ago. They ran a little blurb about my blog (without ever asking me...) under the title "Prolific Beer Blogger Now Based in Brockton." How did they even find my blog do you ask? Why that would be this (much better written) article that a student up at the University of Maine Orono wrote about my blog. Zach did a pretty good job of hitting the high points of our conversation, and while I don't quite carry a notebook of the beers I have drank, I think he did a good job of capturing how out of control this hobby has gotten... I mean, 500 beers?! Anyhoo, here is Zach's article.

Beer Police gets a sidekick
By Zach Dionne
10/23/08

Cracking a fresh Pumpkinhead and striking the keys on the newest edition of this column, I can say I'm having a good time - with the column, not just the beer. This one's especially exciting as it's not limited to the questionable opinions of my not-quite-veteran palate. This edition focuses on Josh Smith, originally of Mt. Vernon, Maine. He runs a blog at joshsbeerblog.blogspot.com and recently championed more than 500 beers rated and described.

Josh keeps track of every beer he samples in a notebook. He devotes "the bulk" of his purchases to tasting new items. Nearly limitless styles and different brewers keep him interested. "You could drink beer for the rest of your life and not try everything that's out there, you know?"

Yes, I know, but Josh Smith is a hell of a lot closer than me.

He segued into microbrews with Samuel Adams. "Those are pretty drinkable," he said. He now prefers Portland's Shipyard to Boston's Sam Adams. Geary's and Allagash are his choice Maine breweries.

"Geary's has been a longtime favorite. Very balanced, very flavorful - two things I really look for in a beer," Josh said.

Although Josh now lives in Brockton, Mass., he considers Maine home and still cherishes the state's quality brews. "I'm always defending Maine beers down here. They think I kind of boost the scores for Maine beers. It's not just the beer; it's the experience. It's fun sampling local beers."

Bar Harbor Brewing Co.'s Cadillac Mountain Stout, the highest rated beer in Maine, is an esteemed favorite of Josh's. "I like a lot of the dark beers. I think that's something Maine does really well. Maine really has a very good reputation among the beer community."

Josh began brewing his own beer recently and feels the experience gives him new insight into tasting and appreciating other brewers' work. For mainstays, he leans to Cape Ann Fisherman's Brew or Geary's Pale Ale. I put him in the tough hypothetical situation of only having $5 and needing some beer. His answer: "If I'm not going to put the money into a microbrew beer, I'll honestly buy PBR. I find it very easy going down."

Score! The Beer Police and veteran Josh Smith are on the same level in one regard.

We are not on the same tier of succinct tasting vocabulary, however. It takes practice.

"They used some words like 'bready malts' or 'piney hops,' and it's like, really? I don't see that," Josh said of his early days rating and describing beer for pleasure. "At first, I thought people were just kind of full of it." Josh is now fine-tuned to appreciate the subtleties and intrinsic shortcomings of the best and worst brews, the "deeper levels of complexity," in his words.

After the inspirational, craving-inducing interview, I made haste to Burby & Bates to compare taste with him. Consider our takes on the Bar Harbor Cadillac Mountain Stout:

Josh's blog: "Perfect black pour, with tan head of tight bubbles and decent retention. There is a lot going on in this aroma: chocolate malt, free coffee and figs. Taste is of semi-sweet chocolate and roasted coffee … Slightly astringent and gently hopped. Silky smooth mouthfeel and fairly heavy."

My notebook: "Creamy, great consistency, terrific taste." Hmm.

"I think a lot of people would look at this and think, 'oh, he's a beer snob.' I'm amazed at how much there is out there. You might not like beer, but there's probably a style you'd think, 'hey, that's pretty good,'" he said.

Josh uses the blog to keep track of what he's tried and to express his personal beer tastes; he doesn't purport to be an authoritative source on the absolute merit of individual beers. When I questioned his rating of Sea Dog's blueberry ale (a sad 3 out of 10), a wildly popular Maine brew, he responded: "My fiancee loves that Blue Paw, and I couldn't be happier. Hey, she's drinking beer."

A Week of Beers, From A to P

Alesmith Old Numbskull

750 ml -- Cork's, Mansfield

the celebratory drink on election night as a tribute to... you guessed it, our outgoing president. a pretty standard barleywine if you ask me: nice looking, big aroma, very alcoholic flavor, and thick/syrupy mouthfeel. i have enjoyed the alesmith brews i have tried, but at $13 a bottle i am going to have to deduct a point here.

Score: 7

Leinenkugels Oktoberfest

Bottle -- Weymouth

ah, the brewers of fruit loops, so we meet again! this is as bland as the other one is obnoxious. sweet crystal malts and very watery. never would have guessed this is an oktoberfest.

Score: 4

Mayflower Thanksgiving Ale

Tap -- Union Brewhouse, Weymouth

i had never heard of this until i found it on tap at union brewhouse in weymouth. very muddled taste with unknown unpleasantness hidden towards the back... think oak, smoke, vanilla, and whiskey. yeah, it didn't really go together. i like the concept of a beer tailored for thanksgiving, but not the final product.

Score: 3

North Coast ACME California IPA

Tap -- Union Brewhouse, Weymouth

kind of a high abv for an ipa at 7+% but i didn't really pick it up in the flavor. hops in this ipa are definitely citrusy in nature. very refreshing and smooth. i still haven't met a beer from north coast that i haven't liked...

Score: 8

Peak Organic Espresso Amber Ale

Tap -- Union Brewhouse, Wemouth

espresso in an amber ale? another awesome idea. huge smell of espresso and flavor is overwhelmed by coffee beans as well. however, the flavor is so intense that this beer doesn't have the drinkability i might have hoped for in an amber ale. i'd like to play around with this concept as a homebrew further

down the line...

Score: 8

Three cheers for Jeff Merkley (and that Obama guy too...)!

I could not have been more confident in an Obama victory last night. I have been following this race every day for two years and knew the poll numbers and electoral scenarios inside out. Obama was going to win. And yet, I didn't sleep the previous four nights. And after voting on election day, I found myself back at home, hyperventilating, rocking back and forth in the fetal position, surrounded by 30 pages of maps and electoral counts.

In times like these, you need a sure thing, a beer that that is going to deliver an all-around pleasant drinking experience. I had just the ticket, thanks to my friend Heather Angell's visit to the Great State of Oregon. Heather brought me back three beers from the beer heaven that is the Pacific Northwest: Deschutes Black Butte Porter, one of my very favorite beers; a new organic ale from Deschutes; and a new IPA from Fish Brewing Company in Olympia, WA.

(As for the title of this post, Jeff Merkley is my one-time landlord and now junior U.S. Senator from Oregon, after defeating incumbent Republican Gordon Smith by the narrowest of margins. Congratulations, Senator Merkley, and I'll drink to that with a good Oregon beer! And hooray for you too President-elect Barrack Obama! My friends know I am not one to get too political, but... for the last eight years -- my entire political life -- I have watched with increasing desperation as Bush and his band of thieves have run this country into the ground without any regard for the general welfare of its citizens. As someone who follows politics closely and cares deeply for this country, it was too much for me to take; I am a beaten man. But our long national nightmare is over. Put it on your calender: Saturday, January 17th, 2009 will be my Bad Bush, Good Beer party! This is a serious cause for celebration...)

Deschutes Black Butte Porter
Bottle -- Portland, OR
black butte porter appears at the top of one of my first beer posts as a perfect 10... but nothing further is said about this beer. let me do so here. first things first, deschutes puts out some very appealing, simple labels that really draw you in. (also: purchase before date clearly printed on label, a feature that should be common, but isn't.) a dark brown, kind of mysterious pour. lots of roasted malts, a little sweet caramel, and faint hops on nose... a full aroma for sure, and avoids cola-like smell of many porters. malts are more burnt in taste, and finish is coffee. could not possibly be more perfectly balanced by bittering hops. very smooth, healthy carbonation, and medium-bodied. full aroma and taste, easy drinking... not much more you can ask for. i was very glad to discover that this beer withstood the test of time and my changing tastes. just as good as i remembered; if i had to drink five beers for the rest of my life, this would be one of them.
Score: 10

Deschutes Green Lake Organic Ale
Bottle -- Portland, OR
this is an amber ale... and a deschutes beers that i had not tried yet! dark copper in glass... aroma of hops jumps out at you, both citrus and piney... very nice. malts in up taste are up front, followed by those delicious hops. superbly balanced. very smooth going down and quite sessionable. i love the hop flavor in this one, and really it is the best organic beer i can remember trying.
Score: 9

Fish Tale Organic India Pale Ale
Bottle -- Portland, OR
hazy orange, thick head. floral, piney hops on nose. flavor is of grapefruit hops and very bready... bitterness is mild at best. easy drinking but the flavor wasn't my favorite. not bad at all, but there are much better ipa's out there.
Score: 6