Making Bacon – Part 5 – Bacon Beer

This one will be short and sweet because I didn’t take a lot of pictures and there’s not really a lot to tell.

And with that amazing sales pitch, here’s the story…

As you may or may not remember, in the second post of this series, the pork belly was being smoked and at the same time my husband and his friend, John, were brewing beer.  A porter, to be specific.

A couple of weeks after smoking the bacon, the beer was ready for additional flavoring.

Yes, that’s right, Bill added bacon to the beer.

First, we cooked it until it had rendered as much fat as possible and was relatively dry and crisp.

Then the bacon was broken into small pieces (to fit through the openings of the carboys)…and dropped into the beer.

Yes, I know.  Kind of wacky.  But interesting.

The bacon hung out in the beer for a couple of weeks before Bill bottled it.  He’d also left some of the porter bacon-free (just in case the bacon beer was hideous – he didn’t want to waste it).

And then – we tried it.

Hm.

I tasted a faint smokiness, but Bill didn’t.  Sometimes I detect flavors he can’t pick up on. 

Anyway – it tasted fine.  Not greasy, either.  Just dark and a bit smoky.

We served it to people and had them try to guess what was in it.  Or we told them up front if we thought they were brave enough to sample the current experiment.

I know – kind of anticlimactic, huh?

The worst part was cleaning out the carboys that had contained bacon bits.  A little icky.

Fortunately, cleaning carboys does not fall within my job description.  :)

Comments

[Home beer]

Bacon and beer - my absolute favourites. What more to ask from life :).

[Kat]

I don't clean carboys, nor do I clean anything exploded OUT of carboys. I'll clean up the sticky malting mess and I'll clean up bottles that burst. But I will not clean the hops and grains off the ceiling or the walls. Nuh uh, no how.