• If you have a question about commercial production or the hot sauce business, please post in Startup Help.

Hot Beer Sauce

Ok, so.
Here’s the Story bout a dude named Paulky
who was downing several ice cold Keystone Lights.
He had his pepper, laid out before him
and a full pot on the stove.

All right this is sounding like a take off on the Brady Bunch theme song, :dance:
So after watching the whole pepper debauchery http://www.thehotpepper.com/topic/18704-hot-n-heavy-2010/
and all of those Keystone Lights being downed I was suddenly hit with the thoughts of developing a Hot Sauce based on the beer flavor. Starting off is going to be research on which beer to use as the base. Oh yeah, beersearch! It’s going to be hard work but someone’s got to do it.

Now, off to the Beer Store. :woohoo: :woohoo: :woohoo:
 
Did someone call?

I have actually had a lot of experience using beer based sauces and adding peppers. In fact I have done that a couple times for the throwdowns.

The best way that I have found to impart heat into the beer is by tossing the beer into a frying pan,increasing surface area where direct heat is applied as opposed to like a sauce pot, deseeding the pepper and then cut it up into rings like you would to put on a sammich, and tossing it in the beer and letting it simmer for 5-10 minutes. This does two things. Allows the heat and from the pepper to be transferred into the beer, and obviously evaporates h20 out of there to slightly thicken up the beer for when you add the rest of the ingredients.

Now temperature that you simmer depends on the style of beer used and what sort of food it is going on. For lighter bodied, pale, low plato beers, a lower temperature is required because with direct heat like that, maillard reactions are going to cause that beer to darken and caramelize pretty quickly. For full bodied stouts, porters, bocks, barleywines, higher temperature seems to work better for me, because I am looking for that reaction to occur to impart some deeper more toffee and raisin flavors into the sauce, and the left over long chain sugars and dextrins that arent used during fermentation really help with that.

The style of beer used depends obviously on the style of food you are cooking. Usually certain style of beers go better with certain styles of food. I say usually because everyones taste is different. If I am making Carbonara I am not going to be using a belgian style strong ale. If I am making smoked duck I am not going to be using a helles lager as a base for a sauce.

Best one I ever did was used a beer I brewed myself. It was an Imperial Stout brewed with black strap molasses and caramelized raisins. I took that, tossed it in a frying pan, heated it to a simmer, added a half of an orange hab sliced, rosemary, lavender, minced garlic, and black pepper, and threw it on a wood grilled strip steak and peppered and smoked sea salt asparagus.
 
Wow really good to know stuff before I go boiling a beer and Oops, thanks wheebz!

Kind of slow today at work and was thinking about a label for this sauce. Tossed around a few ideas and they finally worked themselves into this. What do you think? Really having a hard time with the words as other than white the colors are drowned out by the background. I really hate to lighten the background I like it as is but I don't like the white lettering and I may have to. What do you think?

Brewmaster.jpg


I like this better but the lettering is harder to read.

RocketManOrig.jpg


Edit: Fixed the Dessert issue in the second label.
 
I'm diggin' the label, but are you sure you were forged from a dessert storm? Like cupcakes or pie?

No,no I was Forged in the Heat of Battle and Tempered in a Desert Storm. And yes I'm sure..Pic to follow as Proof of life :beer:

Note to self, read twice before commenting. No it was Pepperment stick ice cream.
 
No,no I was Forged in the Heat of Battle and Tempered in a Desert Storm. And yes I'm sure..Pic to follow as Proof of life :beer:

Note to self, read twice before commenting. No it was Pepperment stick ice cream.

Just wanted to make sure you didn't start printing out labels with the misspelling.
 
Still in concept phase. Did you see where I messed up and put Dessert Storm?

Edit: Having to fly out this morning and I'm not sure whether I'll have a connection or not as I didn't make the hotel arrangements. Hope everyone has a great week.

Cheers,
 
So, if you’ve read my latest update in my Jamaican Hot Sauce thread you’ll know it was a very busy week last week and I won’t repeat it here. Now the beer sauce, this was interesting because some of the ones I thought would work really didn’t. For instance, the Lagers, as I stated above the Pilsner was totally lost to the flavor of the peppers and I thought that some of the more full bodied lagers would work but they too were kind of lost to the peppers. The ones that did best in this test were the ales and one very full flavored dark beer. Here’s a look at how I did it:

First I took some Orange Habanero’s removed the stem and cut them in half leaving the seeds and ribs in. I simmered these for 30 minutes and then into a blender to puree them

a92b1c08.jpg


2 tablespoons of puree into the glass

b00d8b8b.jpg


1 cup of beer into the glass

673fa243.jpg


I let them sit for 15 minutes for the beer to take on the flavor of the peppers and then tasted. Most of the time what I got was full on, in your face habanero heat and flavor. In a couple the beer flavor was more an after taste but with 2 of them I got a hint of the beer before the slap of the pepper. Here they are.

The Ale
28b12ad1.jpg


The Dark beer
b037530d.jpg


Problem is I really can’t tell enough from this test to say which one is better. So, I made 2 test batches of sauce. The spoon test from the cooking pot was still pretty much in your face pepper flavor and heat but I’m thinking that with a little aging, say after a week that the flavors will meld some and I’ll get a better idea of what the final sauce will be like. Keep in mind now that these are just cooked sauces and the final one will be a fermented sauce, say 45 to 90 days. And here are the sauces:

All the goodies into the pot to simmer
a356a3bf.jpg


Some nice sauces
70bb3a1c.jpg


I have 5 bottles of dark and 5 bottles of light and just for fun with the left over sauce I made a bottle of 50/50 to see how that might come out.

So, I have 2 taste tester already lined up. P2K has volunteered his taste buds and of course I will be which leaves 3 more sets of bottles for some tasters. Would anyone else like to take part in this experiment? If you would just PM me and let me know.

Cheers,
 
NICE!!! I'm all over it too.

And I'll drink whiskey instead of beer when I taste the sauce, so I don't get false-positive flavor indicators.

What am I saying, Busch light has no flavor...
 
Back
Top