Credit: The Korea Times
I guess kimchi is really catching on now.
The Korea Times has posted a story on two brewers, one from Ontario and the other from Philadelpia, who have incorporated kimchi into making one of their beers.
How did this idea come about? Jimmy McMillan from Philadelphia:
“I love eating Korean barbeque. A few nights before I decided to make the kimchi beer, we had a Korean style barbeque night in the store,’’ recalled McMillan. “After walking by the refrigerator, I noticed about a pound of kimchi was left, along with a few bags of rice crackers.’’
At that moment, he decided to toss the leftovers directly in the mash, one of the first processes in beer brewing.
“I proceeded to brew in a normal style and added some Sriracha hot sauce during the last five minutes of the boil for a final kick,’’ said McMillan. “Then I cooled the wort, pitched the yeast and hoped for the best. Three weeks later, it was complete and almost everyone loved it.’’
The descriptions of the final products don’t sound like sour beer.
“It was a beer first with all of the rich malt flavors, followed by the same lingering flavors that come with kimchi, the spices, garlic and pickled nature of the product.’’
May be you could drink this to wash down that Kimchi Ramen Grilled Cheese you just scarfed.
Read more at The Korea Times
Actually, there have been posts about people putting kimchi into homebrewed beer for years now, though usually they drop it into the secondary, which does get more of a “sour beer” effect because of the souring bacteria (like lactobacillus). This is certainly unusual, but not something that hasn’t been done or thought of before.
Personally, I’d probably leave out the cabbage, as I suspect it adds nothing to the beer, and reconstruct things a different way:
– steam the garlic and any fishy stuff you want to include and then crush it in a press, inside a container of vodka. Leave the crushed garlic and fish stuff in the vodka, and add some hot peppers or Korean red pepper powder.
– Make an amber ale in the regular way, except do it like a Berliner Weisse — however you prefer to get the beer sour is the way to do it. (I’d pitch a strong starter of lactobacillus and a small amount of Brettanomyces yeast, myself.)
– Once the beer had fermented out, remove the garlic/fish/pepper from the vodka, which is now infused with kimchi-like flavors, by pouring it through a cheesecloth into another container: then freeze it, and “fat wash” it, to separate the oil from the alcohol.
– Add the flavored vodka infusion to your sour beer.
Kimchi beer. Oh, I forgot the last step:
– Beg your friends to take it off your hands…
And you would be the one to know. Thanks for the info.
Actually, there have been posts about people putting kimchi into homebrewed beer for years now, though usually they drop it into the secondary, which does get more of a “sour beer” effect because of the souring bacteria (like lactobacillus). This is certainly unusual, but not something that hasn’t been done or thought of before.
Personally, I’d probably leave out the cabbage, as I suspect it adds nothing to the beer, and reconstruct things a different way:
– steam the garlic and any fishy stuff you want to include and then crush it in a press, inside a container of vodka. Leave the crushed garlic and fish stuff in the vodka, and add some hot peppers or Korean red pepper powder.
– Make an amber ale in the regular way, except do it like a Berliner Weisse — however you prefer to get the beer sour is the way to do it. (I’d pitch a strong starter of lactobacillus and a small amount of Brettanomyces yeast, myself.)
– Once the beer had fermented out, remove the garlic/fish/pepper from the vodka, which is now infused with kimchi-like flavors, by pouring it through a cheesecloth into another container: then freeze it, and “fat wash” it, to separate the oil from the alcohol.
– Add the flavored vodka infusion to your sour beer.
Kimchi beer. Oh, I forgot the last step:
– Beg your friends to take it off your hands…
And you would be the one to know. Thanks for the info.