Tap report tomorrow
After posting about my soured beer last week I began thinking about what good all this spoiled beer is and interestingly the answer came from the early days of this fine country. Back in the early days of the United States brewing could be hit and miss. Often wild yeasts, fungus, and bacteria could easily spoil a batch of beer. Couple that with the sanitation practices of the time and it’s a wonder that any beer made it to the point of consumption without tasting like gym socks. The reality of the situation though is that these early Americans grasped this problem better then we often think. In The Frugal Housewife published in 1830, Lydia Maria Francis Child says that spoiled beer is good for diluting strong vinegar, works well in flapjacks, and can be used in place of wine. In fact many historical recipes that call for flat beer may be calling for spoiled beer since the bacteria removed the sugars needed for the yeast to carbonate the beer. Now that I think about it spoiled beer would be an excellent substitution to a Sunday roast, or Welsh Rabbit. That is if it has a sweet spoiled taste, and not the gym socks one. Also if the PH is right it can be used in a marinade as a meat tenderizer. The possibilities are endless, and essentially I have 5 gallons of culinary experimentation to do. In fact I may take a page out of Chef Steve Corry’s book and make a fruit tincture out of a few of these bottles and see what I can do with it. The fun part of this experiment will be keeping track of the recipes, and posting them on here. Who knows, there may be a once a week thing coming on until I use up these beers. Anyone else out there have any ideas on ways to use spoiled beer? If so let me know please. Also if you live in the Salem/Keizer area of Oregon and want to use some in your cooking and let me know how it works just drop me a line in the comments.
Brewers like to make complicated words up for their hobby, and this has created a problem of sorts for me. A lot of my friends apparently have no clue what a lot of the terms I use mean, and why should they, since many of them don’t brew. So to overcome this obstacle, and prevent the vacant looks, here’s a list of some brewing terms, and what they mean.
I have been brewing for over a year now, and have never had a brew spoil… That is I hadn’t until a few weeks ago. Not having had experience with spoilage I panicked, and sent emails out to the four corners of the earth for advice. The general consensus was that if my beer was still in the fermentor I could just wait it out, then bottle and let age, and maybe on a long shot the beer would still taste good. Here’s my problem though. My beer is no longer in the fermentor. In fact it is bottled, and sitting in my room carbonating. Why, oh why cruel world did you have to take this beer before it’s time? Not one to sit back and cry about spoilt beer though I decided to diagnose where I went wrong. I know the infection got into my beer sometime during the process of moving it into a secondary. How do I know this? Well not only was it the last time I tasted the beer, but I was somewhat lax in my standards while moving it. At the time I only had one fermentor, and that was my 5 gallon carboy. Not having a suitable vessel for a secondary seemed like a big obstacle, until I got the idea of using my brew pot as a holding tank while I cleaned and sanitized my carboy. The problem with this was that my brew pot has a fairly loose fitting lid, which unlike the brew pot, I forgot to sanitize. All of this could have been prevented if I’d done the following. Had a secondary vessel, sanitized all of the equipment, and simply tasted the beer before bottling. So only one last thing remains I guess. Does anyone want five gallons of spoiled beer?