In “Hopeless Homebrew Solutions,” Emily Hutto offers some culinary suggestions for homebrew that didn’t quite turn out the way you hoped. For instance, she suggests that if your homebrew is too yeasty, you can try using some of it in beer bread or biscuits. Or if your batch is too boozy, you can reduce it down to a barbeque sauce as Breckenridge Brewery does. Or if you have an overly estery homebrew on your hands, you can use it in a brine bath for turkey or chicken.
However, you don’t have to wait for a bad batch to cook with homebrew. Pairing your favorite homebrew with a home-cooked meal is a fun way to hone your skills as a brewer and as a cook. One of my favorite approaches is to simply work the beer itself into the dish with which I plan to serve it. If the beer works well as an ingredient, then it will almost certainly be a wonderful accompaniment to the meal.
I tend to brew seasonally, and my cooking reflects that seasonality as well. Grilled witbier-marinated citrus shrimp is great backyard fare in the summer, while Oktoberfest just wouldn’t be the same without Märzen-braised bratwursts served with home-fermented red sauerkraut and sourdough Bauernbrot.