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Brewing with Bacon (Including a Recipe from Uncommon Brewers)
Cured pork is not just for breakfast any more. Try adding a bit of comforting umami and smoke to your next brew with these tips.
Bacon, the beloved breakfast staple, regularly turns up in beer these days, usually paired with some maple syrup and coffee. On its own, however, bacon can provide rich flavors that build over the course of a pint so long as you choose your meat wisely.
The idea for the Bacon Brown Ale that Alec Stefansky, brewmaster at Uncommon Brewers in Santa Cruz, California, makes actually came from ice cream. He’d make a candy cap–mushroom ice cream with maple, bits of bacon, and crunched up stroopwafels. And it was the bacon paired with the sweet that started him down the ale path.
Brewing with bacon isn’t as simple as going out to the grocery store, picking up some strips, and dropping them into your recipe.
Bacon, the beloved breakfast staple, regularly turns up in beer these days, usually paired with some maple syrup and coffee. On its own, however, bacon can provide rich flavors that build over the course of a pint so long as you choose your meat wisely.
The idea for the Bacon Brown Ale that Alec Stefansky, brewmaster at Uncommon Brewers in Santa Cruz, California, makes actually came from ice cream. He’d make a candy cap–mushroom ice cream with maple, bits of bacon, and crunched up stroopwafels. And it was the bacon paired with the sweet that started him down the ale path.
Brewing with bacon isn’t as simple as going out to the grocery store, picking up some strips, and dropping them into your recipe.
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“It’s a challenging thing because if you put the word bacon into the name, it’s great for a selling point, but you create expectations,” says Stefansky. “One of the big challenges we’ve had is that it doesn’t become a great big grease bomb or overwhelming. The bacon flavor in our Bacon Brown Ale is drinkable, with umami and smoke, but it builds as you drink; it doesn’t knock you out right away.”
Working with a butcher, Stefansky gets a whole pork leg, skin on and bone in, that has been rubbed, smoked, and cured “until it’s almost jerky,” and then he adds that the boil (about a pound per barrel at the brewery) where it rehydrates and adds that familiar smoky meaty flavor.
“If I can get some trotters I like to throw those in, too.”
Stefansky previously brewed with pork belly but stopped “because the fat ends up causing fermentation issues, and you wind up with chunks of fat when you’re trying to crash, cool, and package.” When you have a higher proportion of meat to fat, you get the flavor folks are looking for, and by adding it to the boil, you’re “functionally making a stock that just happens to be fermentable.”
Plus, there are the leftovers. After fishing the meat out of the kettle, the brewery usually has a taco party, inviting people to come over with their preferred toppings and piling tortillas with meat that just perfectly shreds from the bone.
While you’re most likely to encounter stouts when it comes to the bacon treatment, Stefansky says he prefers a brown-ale base because of the roast character that isn’t too overwhelming. He does add a touch of smoked malt to his base and prefers to use Hallertau Hersbrucker hops for their spiciness and fruitiness. Subtlety goes a long way, and the goal, he believes is to have a beer that builds on the flavors with each sip and one that you can have more than one of, if you so choose.
Uncommon Brewers Bacon Brown Ale Recipe
A nut brown ale brewed with bacon-cured pork.
ALL-GRAIN
Batch size: 5 gallon (19 liters)
Brewhouse efficiency: 72%
OG: 1.068
FG: 1.010
IBUs: 21
ABV: 6.8%
MALT/GRAIN BILL
9.3 lb (4.2 kg) pale malt
1.5 lb (680 g) Munich I
11.2 oz (318 g) Beech-smoked malt
5.6 oz (159 g) Carafoam
5.6 oz (159 g) Carafa I
HOPS AND ADDITIONS SCHEDULE
1 lb (454 g) bacon-cured lean pork or back bacon at boil start (see Brewer’s Notes)
1.17 oz (33 g) Saphir pellet [5% AA] at 60 minutes
0.78 oz (22 g) Hallertau Hersbrucker pellet [5.6% AA] at 10 minutes
A sprinkle of Hershbrucker pellet at the end of the boil
YEAST
Wyeast 1728 Scottish Ale
DIRECTIONS
Mash grains at 148°F (64°C) for 50 minutes. Raise the temperature to 158°F (70°C) and hold for 15 minutes. Raise the temperature to 165°F (74°C) for the sparge and sparge with 172°F (78°C) water. Boil for 60 minutes, following the hops and additions schedule.
After the boil, chill the wort to 68°F (20°C). Aerate the wort and pitch the yeast. Ferment at 68°F (20°C).
BREWER’S NOTES
I recommend using a lean cut of pork for this beer, if possible. The flavor comes from the meat, not the fat. For ours, we use an entire bacon-cured leg. If you use bacon, instead of belly, try using back bacon. Before you add the bacon to the boil, put it into a 350°F (177°C) oven until it’s crispy and most of the fat has rendered out. It will be a delicious snack after the end of boil.
