A Collection of Wine Recipes

By AMANDA SMITH

With local breweries and wineries popping up everywhere, learning how to make wine is on everyone's to-do list. Utilize the guidance of home-winemaking. This book has a fun, practical, step-by-step approach to making your wine. The book begins with an introduction to cooking with different beers and precisely what to do. After the fundamentals are covered, you're given a variety of tested, proven, delicious recipes. More than just grape wines, you'll learn how to make wine out of everything from daily usage ingredients and concentrates to foraged ingredients such as berries and roots. There are even recipes that utilize dandelions and other unexpected elements. With many great options, you can expand your winemaking season indefinitely. Winemakers of every skill level will appreciate the wealth of information. So get this essential winemaking book, and get started. You'll be sipping to your success in no time.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Amanda Smith
• Release date: Mar 8, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201054328

Book preview

BEER IS DELICIOUS, BUT TOO MUCH BEER IS NEVER GOOD.

You get the best results with a balanced dosage of the beer in the dishes. That means adding beer step by step, so that the beer does not form the backbone of the dish, but gives it a subtle accent. Many stews with meat or poultry are enriched by adding some beer to the stew 10 to 15 minutes before the end of the stew time.

Adding too much beer at once can make the dish taste a bit more like hops. So it gets a little more bitter.

This taste can be reduced by adding sugar, fruits with a high sugar content such as: raisins, dates, figs, prunes. Vegetables that taste a bit sweet, such as leeks, (winter) carrots, celery, onions, red peppers can also soften the bitterness. In addition, these vegetables have a taste-enhancing effect. Finally, cream, crème frache, cornflour, potato flour and all-binders can also help to reduce bitterness.

Make sure that you do not let the stew or a sauce with beer reduce too long. Even then a bitterness could dominate. It remains a matter of trying out in the kitchen and that is also a challenging and educational aspect of cooking with beer.

COOKING WITH WHEAT BEER

Wheat or white beers are brewed with 30-50% wheat, mixed with barley malt.

In terms of color, they are light, white-yellow and usually somewhat cloudy beers. Due to the addition of coriander, dried orange peel and sometimes a hint of cardamon and liquorice, these beers have a pleasant fruity, sweet and/or slightly sour taste.

The best-known Belgian white beers include Hoegaarden, Steendonk, Brugs wheat beer, Dentergems, Blanche de Namur, Celis White, Haecht white beer, Watou's wheat beer.

In the Netherlands, Witte Raaf, Wieckse Witte, Gulpener Korenwolf, Zeeuwsche Witte and Valkenburg's wit are among the better-known wheat beers.

Due to their soft and fresh taste, these beers, if properly dosed, give a subtle accent the stew and lightly bound sauces. Vegetables that can be perfectly combined with white beer include asparagus, salsify, chicory, celery and the white of the leek.

Fish that is poached or stewed in fish stock to which a dash of wheat beer has been added, gets an extra fresh taste. This applies in particular to fish species such as cod, whiting, fresh salmon, turbot, brill, sole and crustaceans and shellfish such as mussels and scallops. Lightly bound sauces to which wheat beer has been added will also enhance the flavor of these fish species. These sauces will also be a good accompaniment to stewed chicken and veal dishes.

A dash of wheat beer in a cream or lightly-bound soup will also have a subtle taste-enhancing effect.

A dressing with a dash of wheat beer will give many salads with various lettuce varieties, cucumber, tomato and radish, combined with slices of (smoked) chicken fillet or slices of finely chopped ham, roast beef, cured meat or fish fillet a pleasant sweet-sour taste.

In a fruit salad, wheat beer can be combined well with pieces of fresh fruit, such as strawberries, peaches, apricots, pears, apple, banana, cherries, pineapple, kiwi, orange, mango. Served as cool as possible in deep plates or chalice glasses, such a dessert is a refreshing finish to many a meal.

COOKING WITH FRUIT BEERS

The traditional fruit beers such as cherry and raspberry beer were created by maturing and fermenting the fruits on the original beer. Usually this was a lambic, a fairly sour and 100% self-fermenting, unfiltered beer from the area around Brussels. This unique area, the Zenne region, is known for its spontaneous fermentation of beer by microorganisms that are in the air. In the Pajottenland, the region west of Brussels, there are still a few small breweries that produce fruit beers in the traditional way.

Many contemporary fruit beers are characterized by the addition of fruit juice, fruit extracts or thickened fruit purée to the original beer, which does not necessarily have to be a lambic. After all, lambic can only be produced in the Zenne region.

Most fruit beers have an alcohol percentage of between 2.5 and 5.5% vol. alcohol. Outliers are for example: Oude Kriek van Hanssens from Dwerp of 6% vol. alcohol and Morning Kriek (Als Dauw In de Mond) from home brewery Domus from Leuven of 7% vol. alcohol.

Fruit beers have a pleasant sweet-sour, fresh taste, in which the fruit or fruit extract used is clearly recognizable.

Brewery De Troch from Wambeek in the Pajottenland is undoubtedly the specialist in the field of fruit beers. The Chapeau range consists of beer with pineapple, strawberry, apricot, lemon, peach, raspberry, mirabelle.

Other breweries that market fruit beers usually limit themselves to three types of fruit, namely kriek (cherry), raspberry and peach.

There are also beers with apple (eg Newton, Bière d'Aubel) and passion fruit (Florin Passion).

Many fruit beers are excellent as an aperitif, accompanied by small, light bites.

Fruit beers are extremely suitable for use in salad dressings. For example, instead of raspberry vinegar, raspberry beer can be used.

They can enrich a sauce for poultry, veal or fish by adding a splash of fruit beer at the last minute, whether or not in combination with pieces of (fresh) fruit. A classic example is baked duck breast fillet with cherry beer and cherries.

Desserts with fresh fruit get an extra fresh taste by adding well-chilled fruit beers. For example, finely chopped peaches and apricots with peach beer. Also in a sabayon with ice cream, pancakes or fruit pie. And also in a bavarois or sorbet, the fresh, fruity character of many fruit beers comes into its own. The taste of homemade ice cream, which contains fruit beer, is also surprising.

The best-known Belgian fruit beers are those of Timmermans, Hanssens, Lindemans, Belle-Vue, Mort Subite, De Troch, St.Louis, Van der Linden, Lindemans, Cantillon, Jacobins, not to mention Boon and Liefmans. In the Netherlands we know Pombie (apple), 't Schoenlappertje (blackcurrant) and Gulpener's new range of fruit beers (including cherries, blueberries, raspberries).

COOKING WITH DARK ABBEY BEERS

These beers are characterized by their full taste and slightly bitter to (slightly) sweet aftertaste. They are often classified under the category of double or dark browns.

The alcohol percentage