Beer Mustard

[TasunkaWitko]

FarmSteady's Beer Mustard

One of my goals for this coming weekend is to make Soft Pretzels and Beer Cheese, using the kit that I purchased from FarmSteady:

http://farmsteady.com/instructions-how-to-make-soft-pretzels/

In their instructions, they also include a recipe for beer mustard, so I'll be making that, as well.

I am adding this recipe to the collective knowledge here, in case anyone wants to try it:

How to Make Beer Mustard

Equipment

Food Processor or Blender
Sauce Pan
Non-Reactive Bowl

Ingredients

1.5 oz of mustard seeds
2 Tablespoons (30 ml) vinegar (Apple cider vinegar is best)
1/4 Cup (60 ml) Beer (Dark and malty German, Belgian, or English beer is best)
Spice Pack*

In non-reactive bowl, add mustard seeds.

Add vinegar and 2 tablespoons (30 ml) beer to mustard seeds. Cover and place in the refrigerator for 8-12 hours while mustard seeds acidify.

Note: Mustard seeds only start to taste hot, spicy, and mustard-like after soaking in something acidic. Otherwise, they taste more like seeds than mustard.**

After your mustard has sat in the fridge for 8-12 hours, combine spice pack and 2 tablespoons (30 ml) of beer in a small sauce pan.

On medium heat, bring to a boil while stirring, then remove from heat. Let cool for 10 minutes.

In a food processor or blender, combine the mustard seeds (with its liquid) from the fridge with the spice and beer mixture from the sauce pan.

Blend until desired smoothness is reached. A great mustard can be super smooth or quite chunky. Make it how you like it.

Transfer to a sealed container and refrigerate for at least 8 hours before eating. This allows for the flavor and consistency to meld.

Enjoy with pretzels and beer. If you don't eat it all right away, your beer mustard will keep in the fridge for a month.

http://farmsteady.com/instructions-how-to-make-beer-mustard/

*My kit didn't come with this, so I have written to the company so that they can send one to me. It will arrive too late to use it this time, but that's okay; more incentive to make it again! In the meantime, a quick internet search reveals that common spices used in various beer mustard recipes include salt, brown sugar, allspice, onion and garlic. With this in mind, I'll improvise something for my first attempt.

**I'm not sure that this note of theirs is accurate, but it could be; my understanding is that it is the water (or, in this case, beer) that triggers the mustardy-ness of mustard, but I am no expert, and am claiming no expertise. In any case, things seem to work well when their instructions are followed, so I follow their instructions.

I started this project last night, so that the flavours would have a chance to meld and mellow out in time for SuperBowl Sunday (which is like Christmas, the 4th of July, New Year's Eve and possibly even Saint Valentine's Day for my wife). This first stage is very, very easy - it doesn't really merit photos, but here they are. The lighting isn't as good as I would prefer; however, it will have to do.

First, we have the essential ingredients to get this started:

Mustard seed; a good, dark, HefeWeizen brewed in Montana by a man from Bavaria; apple cider vinegar.

Getting started, I measured out 1.5 ounces of the mustard seed:

Each container proclaims that it holds 1.4 ounces of mustard seed; however, the one I used had 1.49 ounces. I double-checked to make sure that I zeroed-out the scale; finding this to be an accurate measure, I added just enough mustard seed to reach the mark.

Next, I added 2 tablespoons each of the apple cider vinegar and beer:

That's all there is to it! I covered the container and set the mixture in the refrigerator; I'll finish the mustard tonight, which will give a couple-three days for the flavours to meld and mellow out.

More as it happens; etc. &c....

Ron

 

[gunhaus]

I love fresh made mustard, and we do a few different variations depending on what we can get for seeds - but they all boil down to slight changes made to Alton Brown's "Best Mustard Ever" recipe. It really is a great jumping off point for spices and liquids. Subbing pickles juice with beer, all of the pickle juice and vinegar with beer, keeping vinegar, and subbing water with beer, all are viable options. My wife even bought me a neat little stoneware crock to store my concoctions in. Fresh homemade pretzels are one of my guilty pleasures! I am hungry now dammit!
http://www.foodnetwork.com/profiles/talent/alton-brown

 

[TasunkaWitko]

Hi, Gunhaus -

Those are some great perspectives on mustard - I'll definitely check our Alton's writing on mustard, and see what I can learn.

You might find this interesting, a pretty good write-up on various world mustards, written by a friend of mine:

http://foodsoftheworld.activeboards.net/making-it-with-mustard_topic3079.html

The kit in the opening post is, of course, only an introductive thing to get one started. Any recipe for pretzels will do, once you sue the kit. The stuff for making the Beer Cheese is re-usable, and the education and skills gained make it worth it, for me. The main thing I like is that these kits get a person inspired to actually get moving with a project, instead of just thinking about it.

 

[gunhaus]

Name's John-

I agree I like the kits - ANYTHING that inspires people to dive in and try new things. It was why I used liked AB's show. He wasn't always right, but he usually kept it simple enough to make it seem worth trying. I was fortunate to be raised around all manner of old timey cooking, and preservation, and it always seemed natural to "make your own" it was just how it was done. It was kind of a revelation when I first met my wife's and her family and they were stunned by the notion of "Making mustard" (Before the AB recipe I used to make my granny's stone ground brown mustard) or curing your own bacon, things like that. They were city dwellers and such things came pre packed from the grocery store. Thanks for the link!

 

[TasunkaWitko]

Awesome background, John; it fits right in with a lot of what I was taught, learning from my father and grandfather. Back in the days not long after the Depression, in Rural North Dakota, you learned to make it, grow it, hunt it, preserve it and stretch it...or you might not have anything to eat.

Ron

 

[gunhaus]

Ron,
I had the great good fortune of growing up in a very rural area that had some very diverse cultures. My dads work put him in contact with just about everyone in our wider community, so as a kid i met a lot of people who were "old world" or at most only a generation removed that lived all over our general region. We had a large Dutch Community south of us, several Amish communities nearby, to the north of us were a number of German families (Including the fine gunsmith i apprenticed with before college!)and there was a very large Swedish representation as well. My family would probably be called "foodies" today, whatever. My folks had a great interest in diverse foods, and my grandparents we equally inclined, as a result we were often sticking our noses into process or recipes that our neighbors just though of as the stuff you ate on Wednesday. One of our biggest customers was also a well known local grocer who made all their own smoked and cured meats, and as a kid i haunted their place as much as i could (Bacon IS a proven narcotic) One of my favorite memories was our nearest neighbor. He was quite elderly when i was a kid, but he always treated all us local kids just like one of the guys. Every fall he butchered two pigs. One he roasted whole for all his friends and neighbors. The other he processes from rooter to tooter. Even as a fairly young kid i remember helping with the whole thing - as did a number of other neighbor kids in my peer group. We were all too young to realize that the pig roast was this old mans continuing celebration of Octoberfest. And that he pretty effectively Tom Sawyered us kids into doing much of the grunt work on his hog killing! And I could care less, it turned out to be valuable life lessons, and I love thinking back on those pig roasts, and learning about eating jowls, and tongue, and assorted parts that many would frown at today! And i still remember long lost things like REAL head cheese, or sous meats, pickled feets and knuckles. Rendering lard (Probably would have a thousand activists and welfare workers rain down your head if they heard about a 9 year old stirring the paddle on a large iron lard rendering pot today!!!!!) was a treat, because of all those freaking outrageous crackling pieces that floated up and were skimmed off. Piggy popcorn!!! Damn - now i am REALLY hungry.

- . . I had a pretty good time as a kid - Robert Ruarke

Me too.

 

[TasunkaWitko]

My background - not quite as diverse, but many of the same lessons, especially in "the old ways."

Our family was what is known as "Germans from Russia," meaning that we spent a few generations from Ukraine before settling in America. My grandfather was also half-Swedish; his mother was from there. Very small, very rural community...not wealthy, at least in terms of money...but very, very happy, hard-working and industrious.

 

[Temptd2]

Isn't making your own stuff fun? We make mustard, two quarts at a time. Most of it has beer in it; some of it has wine instead, and that makes a hotter mustard, for whatever the chemical reason may be.

We moved middle of November and haven't had a chance to make any, but the last dregs of the bottle of homemade mustard are about to be reached - KOTC already has the jar of yellow mustard seeds on the counter as a reminder to get it started! We add the vinegar and a few other ingredients to the seeds in a quart Mason jar, let them sit at least two days, then proceed. We save vinegars from giardinera, pickled banana peppers, etc. to use in the mustard. Gives it a nice flavor, whichever one we use!

 

[gunhaus]

Yes indeed. That AB recipe listed above used sweet pickle juice, and that inspired us to do much the same; pepperoncinis, sweet hot pickles, vinegar based dills, all good stuff!

 

[TasunkaWitko]

I finished my beer mustard last night, and it turned out very good, I think; I am guessing that it will be even better when the flavours meld and mellow a bit.

Continuing where I left off, I took the container with the mustard seeds, beer and vinegar out of the refrigerator and resumed my work. The mustard seeds had, by now, absorbed all but a few drops of the beer and vinegar.

The instructions call for the use of a spice pack that is included with the kit; unfortunately, mine did not come with one. FarmSteady offered to send a replacement; however, it would arrive too late to use for this weekend, so I made up my own after a little looking around and a lot of thought. For this recipe, here are the spices that I used:

1/2 teaspoon of kosher salt
1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
1/4 teaspoon onion powder
1/4 teaspoon allspice
1/4 teaspoon ground coriander

I also added 1 tablespoon of honey.

Except (perhaps?) for the garlic, it "seemed" reasonably German to me, which is what I was going for. I was fairly conservative with my measurements, since I was in new territory and did not want to overwhelm my mustard. Once I see how this works out, I can adjust for future batches; having said that, early indications are that it is going to go really well, by itself and with the pretzels.

Moving along, I measured each of the spices and added it to a small saucepan:

I then added the tablespoon of honey and 2 tablespoons of the same beer that I started with:

Following the instructions, I put this on the stove over medium heat and brought it just to a boil, stirring fairly constantly. The mixture darkened up a bit as (presumably) the Maillard Reaction did its wonderful work, and when the boil was achieved, I removed the saucepan from the heat and let the mixture cool for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.

The spice mixture that I had improvised was proving to be a good one, in my opinion; the aromas coming from the saucepan were quite enticing, and it seemed to me that all spices were present and working together, with none taking over. The addition of the coriander was a last-minute decision, and one that I am glad that I made; it seemed to tie everything together really well.

Once the spice mixture cooled, I brought everything together for the final step of the process: mixing the mustard itself. I briefly considered using my mortar and pestle to do this, but ultimately decided that I'd be better off just tossing it in the Magic Bullet with the grinder "blade." Here's how it looked going in:

A few pulses and whirls later, I had a mostly-smooth mustard with a little bit of grain left in it, just as I intended; here is how it looked:

Not too bad, for a first attempt!

My only concern was that the mustard seemed a little thicker than it "should" be; when I showed this photo to Brook, he confirmed my first impression, stating that mustard tends to thicken as it mellows. Because of this, I'll probably transfer it to a larger container and stir in a little more beer tonight until it achieves the consistency that I am expecting; I am pretty sure that it won't take much. I'll then return it to the refrigerator and try to forget about it for a couple of days.

That's it, as far as the mustard is concerned!

Tonight, I will start my beer cheese, which is basically home-made cream cheese with reduced beer added (the same dark Hefeweizen that I used for this mustard). The procedure will be very much the same as the one I used when making cream cheese for my Everything Bagel project:

http://foodsoftheworld.activeboards.net/cream-cheese-kit-from-farmsteady_topic4708.html

The only difference will be the addition of the bottle of beer, reduced to 1/2 cup in volume.

Then, Saturday evening or Sunday morning, I will bake my home-made soft pretzels, completing the trinity!

As always, thanks for your continuing interest in this project. If you have any questions, comments or other feedback, feel free to post them as a reply to this thread, as discussion is never a bad thing. Also, if anyone is even thinking about trying this - or the related projects with the beer cheese and pretzels - I'd encourage you to do so. My opinion is that the FarmSteady kits are a very good "gateway" into some really nice things that you can and will discover, after you take the plunge.

Ron

 

[passedpawn]

I've been doing this for a few years, but without the beer. A few comments:

• I don't cook at all. Just soak in vinegar for a few days, then blend. No need to use fridge, there's nothing to spoil here.
• Brown seeds can be added for a more rustic look. Try 50/50 yellow and brown.
• If you want a VERY yellow mustard, use only yellow seeds and add some turmeric.
• Add prepared horseradish for a nice bite
• You can get a wagon of seeds for nothing on Amazon. I paid $12 for the following several years ago. Looks like they've gone up, maybe shop around a bit.
• I store it in the cabinet. Never spoils. I imagine the pH is pretty low.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001VNKWO4/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20

 

[TasunkaWitko]

Great input, and some tings to keep in mind for the future - thanks, Andrew!