Wort Case Scenario: Brewer’s Gumbo

Time for a recipe!

Frozen Wort

I’ve really taken a shine to Creole/Cajun cuisine. Some people will resent the ‘slash’ between those terms, but there’s no denying the line between them can be pretty blurry. Since the spirit of this gumbo has to do with repurposing a waste product, let’s call it Cajun. I’ll just list the ingredients here, and get into the nitty gritty in a moment.

Yield: 6-8 servings

12 oz smoked sausage, sliced round
12 oz shrimp (peeled, deveined)

1 c diced green bell peppers
1 c diced celery
2 c diced onion
6 cloves minced garlic
1.5 c okra – sliced round

Dark roux – as needed (see notes below)

Spice blend:
3 T paprika
1.5 t cayenne
1 t garlic powder
1 t onion powder
1 t celery powder
2 t ground black pepper
2 t salt

4-5 c cooked long grain rice

Wort Flow

Simmering liquid:
1 pt brown stock (often marketed as ‘beef’)
1 pt low gravity wort from a dark beer
1/4 c Worcestershire

What’s a roux? Roux is a foundation of classic French cuisine – it is a thickening agent cooked from equal parts fat and flour. Creole and Cajun cuisine’s roots in classic European cuisine makes the use of roux commonplace, but especially dark roux. As roux is made, the flour becomes cooked in the fat and it browns. All different shades of roux are used in various dishes. Because of the length of time needed to turn the roux so dark (and because you would have to stir it constantly on the stove) you will find it rather easy to mix the flour and fat in a cool pan and then slip it into a 350° F oven until it is very, very dark brown. It could easily be 45 minutes. Just make sure it stays below 350° so as not to burn the flour. Then you’ll have to start over. How much roux you make depends on how thick you want your gumbo. I like it rather thick, and considering roux thickens less as it gets darker, I like to make plenty. Keep in mind if the little roux you made isn’t enough, you’re kind of screwed, and excess roux will store well. So go ahead, mix 2 cups or more of flour with enough vegetable oil to form a clumping, squeezable, wet-sand mixture in an oven-safe pan and pop it in the oven, uncovered.

A word about stocks... Stocks are quite literally the first thing we learn in culinary school. I feel like there’s a public misconception that stocks are supposed to be very flavorful and complex. Quite the opposite. Stocks are basically fortified waters. They are simmered with bones and aromatics to create a large volume of liquid where flavors can be built upon and enhanced. Stocks can also be further processed and reduced into sauces like demi-glace. Stocks should not have strongly discernible flavors, salt, or fat. Look at the stocks available in your store, they contain some pretty questionable stuff (what the hell is ‘beef extract’?), which includes added fat and salt – most likely because people look for more substance in their stock. I’ve found the best one available in many supermarkets is ‘Kitchen Basics’ unsalted stocks. ‘Better than Bullion’ is also nice (it stores well), but rather salty. Look for good-quality homemade stocks at farmer’s markets.

Malt Stock

As a brewer, consider what wort really is – it’s much like a stock. Water is (very lightly) simmered in cracked malt and aromatics (if you’re mash hopping), much like shrimp shells and parsley stems.  To take the analogy one step further, finished, cleared beer is much like consomme. Of course the goals and quality characteristics of good wort and stock differ, but it’s a rather elementary process. Alternatively if you don’t have wort on hand, steep some dark specialty malts in double the amount of stock as called for in the recipe. Steep in a very light simmer (around 165° F) for about 20 minutes in cheesecloth or a grain sack of some sort so they can be removed. Funny enough, this is called making ‘tea.’

Beat that meat! The meat is really just a suggestion, you’re welcome to use whatever meat you have, or none at all, if that’s your thing. Keep in mind the dark flavors of the roux, stock, and wort are often paired with ‘darker’ meats like beef, but gumbo is no stranger to experimentation. Interestingly enough, all that toasted flour in the roux lends a ‘fried chicken’ flavor to the dish.

Procedure:

1. You should already have the roux in the oven, the vegetables diced medium (okra sliced into rings), and the meat ready. Now’s also not a bad time to combine everything in the simmering liquid and get it hot.
2. Hopefully you have something like a 5 qt cast iron dutch oven. If not, use whatever 4 or 5 qt pot you have available. Coat the meat with the seasoning blend and brown in the pot with a little bit of oil if necessary. After thoroughly seared, remove from the pot.
3. Add the vegetables, except the okra and garlic. (A lot of recipes I’ve seen call for frying the okra separately. Just be careful not to burn it. However I’ve added frozen okra later on to the simmer and it’s turned out great.) Cook the vegetables until they start to brown.
4. At this point you may have some fond on the surface of the pot. Fond is the goodness that is stuck to the pan after cooking. Add some of the simmering liquid to the hot fond to liberate it from the pot surface – stir constantly while it bubbles, then add the rest of the simmering liquid – this is deglazing. Remember, I said I like my gumbo on the thicker, stew side. If you want something soupier, and less dense, you could add more liquid.
5. Add the reserved meat (and any liquid that came off of it). Bring to a boil.
6. Cover and simmer until everything is tender, maybe 45 minutes. Some recipes call for an hour. Adjust the time depending on the texture you would like – I like it a little toothy. Hopefully this times out well with the roux so it’s out of the oven and has a chance to cool a little. Because you’re simmering for an extended time you can use dried herbs to enhance the flavor. Marjoram, thyme, parsley, etc. Otherwise, a fresh herb bouquet also works.
7. Now’s a good time to start on that rice.
8. After it is done simmering, uncover and add cooled roux to the pot. The liquid is hot and the roux should be cooler so that it mixes without clumping – those roux dots are no good. Add a little at a time and stir in completely until you have the desired thickness. The okra is also a thickener (most people are turned off by its sliminess), but it needs help from the roux.
9. Adjust any seasonings and serve. Molded rice in the middle of a wide bowl makes for a nice presentation. Sprinkle lightly with spicy hop dust. I’ve been thinking about garnishing with Worcestershire gelee, but that’s for another time. Serve with Tobasco  and Worcestershire.

Look out for more recipes featuring brewing ‘waste,’ as well as finished beer.

Wort Case Scenario: Tips

As I have been progressing through my classes, I have been keeping a look-out for various ways to integrate beer with classic techniques. I strongly subscribe to the point of view that beer and beer by-products are prepared items, which should be considered for use as a tool for flavor, much like wine or tomato puree. Of course its use must still be discretionary, as it has various unique properties that will present themselves through trial and error. Having made the beer yourself will of course give you more intimate knowledge of its flavor profile and some understanding of its chemical makeup. Here are some things to keep in mind when cooking with beer and wort.

• Do you want to eat sediment? Be conscious of whether or not the finished beer you’re cooking with is bottle conditioned. But it is a good way to get your vitamins!
• Bitter beer face! You may like the bitterness of an IPA in your glass, but as you reduce its volume in cooking, its bitterness level soars since it becomes concentrated. Either use the sweetest beers you can find, or consider the use of unhopped, unfermented sweet wort. If you don’t brew, ask you friendly neighborhood homebrewer or brewpub.
• Saccharific! If you do use wort, keep in mind that it contains all the sugar that would  be fermented into alcohol (lots of maltose). It’s a different kind of sweetness than what you may be used to, and the flavor is altogether quite different than finished beer, so be sure to taste. Approximately three quarters of wort’s weight is fermentable sugar. This high percentage of sugar makes wort great for syrup – just reduce it until it becomes thick. After all, that’s what malt extract is. Finished beer will also have unfermented sugars (‘body’), but obviously in much less concentration.
• Wort gone wild! Since wort is made up of so much fermentable sugar, it is ideal for fermentation. This is good and bad. Why it’s bad is very simple: if you collected your wort from the mash dregs (before the boil), the liquid is not even pasteurized and it will spoil/ferment very easily from wild yeast. Store in your fridge immediately or freeze. On the other hand if your wort came from the boil kettle dregs, it will have a longer shelf life, but it has been bittered by hops – so that’s a concern. Of course this fermentation can be used for good: bread baking, fermented batters, etc. Of course, unless you’re cultivating sourdough or your own strains of brewing yeast , I would stick to packaged yeasts.

I will explore these various facets of cooking with beer/wort through future posts – stay tuned for more recipes, tips, and pictures.

Beer-Dough Pizza

Pat yourself on the back, you’ve got another batch of wort and yeast doing its thing in the fermentor. With another brew day complete, it’s time for the cleaning to begin. Besides the brew kettle being grimy with spent hops and coagulated proteins, all-grain brewers are always faced with the sopping elephant in the mash tun. Those 10-20 lbs. of grain soaked up more than their weight. Today you can blissfully drop those 30 lbs. of grain down the trash chute before it makes your kitchen smell like garum, because we will be focusing on the other mash waste product: leftover sweet wort runoff, which you’ll have to drain before dumping the grains anyway.

Wort. Sweeeeeet.

If you use a continuous sparging method, you’re going to have leftover wort runoff. Even if you do let the grain bed run dry, chances are your mash tun has some sort of dead space where leftover wort can be found. You may think of these leftovers as a sticky mess waiting to happen, but consider this: it took you just as much time and energy to make those diluted dregs as it did to make the wort that was to be boiled, hopped, and fermented. So put it to use! Since wort is chock full of sugar you prodded enzymes into producing, use it the same way you would use any other sugar water. One of my favorite uses is for breads, since all that’s left is salt and flour. Generally, when I brew, I also make pizza. Here’s a simple recipe.

1 part wort

3 parts flour

Very excited.

For one medium crust, 1/3 cup wort and 1 cup flour will do, otherwise 1 cup wort and 3 cups flour will give you enough for two large crusts or three medium, depending on how thin you want them. I also like to use plenty of salt, about a tablespoon per crust. As far as flour choice, I like to use semolina flour, but bread flour or whatever you normally use will suffice.

So what do we do about the yeast? Bakers’ yeast and brewers’ yeast are the same species (saccharomyces cerevisiae), but produce much different flavor. After all, you don’t see beer being made with bread yeast (except maybe kvass style beer). Of course, that is also because bakers’ yeast isn’t produced under such sanitary conditions. Even regular doughs can get fermented with brewers’ yeast for a flavor twist (try some dry belgian yeast from your local homebrew store).

I appreciate the sediment

So bakers’ yeast will work with the wort (after all, it’s not going to be beer), or you could try reserving some of the yeast you pitched from your brew day – imagine the impact on flavor each different strain may have. You could always pitch with slurry from a previous batch, but you can also let it sit out and ferment spontaneously. Think sourdough. Think sour beer. This requires considerable more time, but the wort is obviously highly fermentable, so if you mix it, they will come. Just remember if you’re using brewers’ yeast, to have the wort 70° to 80° for good fermentation and flavor. For bakers’ yeast, 90° to 95° is good. A teaspoon of active-dry yeast should suffice for a cup of wort.

So how much sugar is in there anyway? Good question. You can get a sense of this by calculating the gravity. Take a reading with your hydrometer. Then, multiply the gravity units by the volume of wort (as expressed in terms of gallons) and then divide by the potential gravity of sugar to get a value that represents pounds of sugar in relation to density.

Dense

Here’s the equation:

(GU * V) / GUpot = W — where GU is gravity units (Specific Gravity minus 1, multiplied by 1000), V is gallons of wort, GUpot is the potential gravity of the substance you are figuring for, and W is the weight, in pounds, that you are solving for.

Here’s an example:

You have 8 ounces of wort which has a specific gravity of 1.010.

(1.010 – 1) * 1000 = 10 GU

8 ounces is 0.0625 gallons. Also, keep in mind, we are basically trying to figure out the density of the sugar water. If the only sugar in this liquid were sucrose, we could assume a potential gravity of 36 points per pound per gallon. Let’s run this equation.

(10 GU * 0.0625 g ) / 36 ppg = 0.017 lbs, or 0.28 oz.

So our liquid has the same density as if you had 0.28 oz of table sugar in 8 oz of water. This is the best way I have of imagining the sugar content in real terms. If you’re using dry yeast (especially rapid rise) the amount of sugar is a minor issue, it will rise like a lean yeast dough, with some sugar for the yeasties to munch on along the way. Note: specific gravity is the common method for a homebrewer, but if your hydrometer has a brix scale, that reading will tell you the percentage of sugar.

After scaling your ingredients, mix the dough using the straight dough method: take the dry ingredients and temper in the wort by thirds while mixing. Step 3 of yeast doughs is the actual fermentation. Cover the dough and put it in a warm place to rise.

Starters: not just for sports.

How long does it rise? Normally, with an all sucrose/monosaccharide fermentation, a hour would be fine. According to this study, however, a maltose/disaccharide heavy wort at any given pH will take much longer to ferment. I’d say to give it at least two hours (longer with a starter), even overnight in the fridge to fully develop texture. The aforementioned study also shows that fermentation seems to cap out at around 70%. Also consider the fact that wort is made up in part by unfermentable sugars called dextrins (check out some numbers here), so any fermentation will have residual sweetness. Look out for lovely nutty and toffee-like flavor in the pizza dough. It will, of course, vary depending on the character malts that made up your grain bill in the first place. You can even add some bitter wort dregs from your brew kettle which will include hop flavor if you think you want that. The point is to experiment.

Beer-dough pizza pie

After the dough doubles and you are happy with its texture, treat it the same way you would any other dough. Punch it, portion it, round it, bench, shape, proof, and bake. I like to use a homemade white sauce or Don Pepino’s tomato pizza sauce (because it’s simple, natural, and flavorful) and a mozzarella/cheddar blend. Top with some peppers and onions and some smoked meat from North-South if you’re lucky enough to have it. Bake at 350° to 400° until golden brown around the edges and all the toppings are heated through or melted. Use your pizza stone, sheet pan, or aluminum foil however you normally would, that’s up to you.

All that’s left is to eat it. You don’t need me to tell you how to do that. Enjoy your beer-dough pizza!

Links I used:

On the study of glucose and maltose fermentation times (in relation to pH)
http://www.jbc.org/content/142/2/579.full.pdf

Wort composition and stuck fermentations:
http://hbd.org/brewery/library/EnzStuckFermAW1095.html