Not quite a doppelbock, not quite an eisbock.

Ok, so the food was a bit low brow tonight.  A chicken hot dog.  But uncured, with no crazy additives, from Whole Foods.  Plus, the sauerkraut!  And the spicy mustard!  And pretzels.  And a pickle.

The wife is at school on Tuesdays.  It’s every man for himself, people.

EKU 28 is doppelbockish.  A slightly less intense Samichlaus.  But no other doppelbock comes close.  It’s highly unusual for the style to be more than 9%, and this one’s 11%.  Alcoholic, and sweet.

And not surprisingly, this German beer went very well with the Germanish food.  The sauerkraut really brought out a pleasant sweetness in the beer.  The pickle and pretzels worked, as well.

Hard to call this a world class pairing you should clamor to copy, but it seems like any time you put a German-brewed beer with a sausage-like meat and sauerkraut, the result is tasty.  Amazing.

The beer pairing was not on par with the previous dopplebock pairing.  I wanted to try something else malty, so I went with Schmaltz Brewing’s He’Brew Genesis Ale: the Chosen Beer.  It’s a nice, mild beer which seems to barely evade classification.  The label calls it a “light brown ale,” but the Schmaltz wesbite calls it “a west coast style pale and amber ale” (which is it guys, a pale ale or amber ale?), and the BeerAdvocate deciders list it as an American pale ale.  If I were the judge here, I’d say it’s an English style brown ale brewed with (mostly) American hops.  The English descriptor indicating the hops are reserved and the malt plays an important role.

But it ain’t as malty as a dopplebock.  And even in their minor role here, the hops try to clash just a tiny bit with the flavors in the brats and potatoes.  This is an acceptable pairing, but I won’t be repeating it.  I think German dunkels and various bocks are probably the best fit for this meal, and I will be going that direction again in the future.

Of course it’s easy to pair a bland, watery beer with any given food.  The challenge comes with flavorful beers.

Just missing the accordian.

But contra my own skepticism, this evening I proved true one significant example of “X country’s beer goes well with X country’s food”: a German style doppelbock with bratwurst and German potatoes.  It was earth-shatteringly perfect.  And it also gave me some insight on the Malt Barrier.  I tend to eat a lot of Italian style food, and I’m starting to get the feeling that malty beers don’t pair well with tomato and garlic-centric foods.  As you can tell, I’m still figuring all this out.

I’d never made German potatoes before, so I had no idea what I was doing.  I was already at the store when the epiphany hit me that I needed to try German food with my remaining bottle of doppelbock.  So I just Googled “recipe german potatoes” on my mobile and clicked on the first thing that came up.

The authenticity of that recipe is dubious in light of the fact that it calls for an Italian dressing seasoning packet, but it worked very well nonetheless.  I did make a couple tweaks.  For one, I hate raw onions.  Can’t stand them on burgers or in salads or anything else.  So I  sautéed the onions and celery.  Also, I didn’t want to buy any apple cider vinegar because I knew we’d never use it again.  So, I used white vinegar and added some chopped apple to the recipe to shake things up.  Finally, I didn’t want to be eating on it for a month, so I cut the whole thing in half.  And I’m glad I did.  We still had a lot left over.

Brats are simple.  I marinated them in some old homebrew.  It was actually an attempt we made at imitating a commercial brew we’d never even tried, Sam Adams’ Boston 375 Colonial Ale:

… a hearty and unfiltered brew made with blackstrap molasses. This traditional ingredient of the colonial-era provided one-third of the fermentable sugars for this brew, turning into carbon dioxide and alcohol, and lending an old-school sweet edge to the beer. To provide some depth, caramel and Munich malts were added, plus a touch of German smoked malt to lend a bit of tradition – as once upon a time all malts were dried over wood flame.

Heaven is sausage simmering in beer.

We were never happy with the results of our homebrewed version, partly because this was back in our first year of brewing (05) and we had a bottle-cleaning issue producing harsh phenols that tainted most of every batch.  But also, blackstrap molasses is not a desirable ingredient in beer.  Food, however, is something else entirely.  Obviously.

I suspected this malty, molasses-laden homebrew would go well soaked up by some brats, and it was a brilliant move.  I let them marinate for several hours, then simmered them gently in the beer on medium-low heat for maybe 25 minutes or so.

Then, of course, we covered them in sauerkraut.  A thoroughly German experience through and through, and I’ve got to say they know what they are doing when they put beer and food together.

Prost!