Cooking with beer is nothing new, however I've had a sort of "eureka" moment recently, which obviously means my brain is frothing up and keeping me up later than I should...
After reading up a bunch about koji's (and its derivatives like miso) possible uses in aging and tenderizing meat, I've come to wonder if perhaps, just as koji replaces the malt enzymes in the sake making process, a creative brewer could fashion a mash with strong protease activity to act as a marinade and tenderize tough cuts of meat. The interest is mostly pure curiosity but I plan on moving out of the city and raising some animals eventually, so the thought of making the most out of a carcass AND a brew day is certainly tantalizing.
From what I gather, the ideal mash for protease activity would use a lightly kilned, highly diastatic malt at protein rest temperatures and pH ranges (i.e. 113 - 131°F and pH 4.2 - 5.3)
Is this insane? Has anyone heard of this being attempted before?
One problem I could see is in keeping meat at the lower end of the temperature range for a few hours might jeopardize food safety, while at the upper end of the range it would effectively slow cook. I could get around all that and just let the enzymes work in the fridge for a much longer time, see if that works.
I have some distiller's malt just, ahem, lying around, so I'll definitely be making a proof-of-concept mash when I find some time. I'll even throw in a control by quickly bringing half of the marinade to a boil to denature the enzymes and marinate the same cut of meat in separate containers (with just enough lemon juice to bring pH under 5.3)
If that works, the ultimate goal would be to come up with a method that could be integrated in a brew day, with a slightly larger grain bill to make up for the couple quarts of wort drawn early in the mashing and dedicated to marinating... so I'm guessing either brew a style that plays on the strengths of a light-coloured, highly attenuated finished product, or do a smaller "marinating" mash, draw some of it and add more flavourful grain before raising temperature to a more conventional mashing range.
So that's a bit of a long first post, I've been meaning to join this community for a while, funny that it should be a crazy marinade idea that pushed me to finally subscribe
After reading up a bunch about koji's (and its derivatives like miso) possible uses in aging and tenderizing meat, I've come to wonder if perhaps, just as koji replaces the malt enzymes in the sake making process, a creative brewer could fashion a mash with strong protease activity to act as a marinade and tenderize tough cuts of meat. The interest is mostly pure curiosity but I plan on moving out of the city and raising some animals eventually, so the thought of making the most out of a carcass AND a brew day is certainly tantalizing.
From what I gather, the ideal mash for protease activity would use a lightly kilned, highly diastatic malt at protein rest temperatures and pH ranges (i.e. 113 - 131°F and pH 4.2 - 5.3)
Is this insane? Has anyone heard of this being attempted before?
One problem I could see is in keeping meat at the lower end of the temperature range for a few hours might jeopardize food safety, while at the upper end of the range it would effectively slow cook. I could get around all that and just let the enzymes work in the fridge for a much longer time, see if that works.
I have some distiller's malt just, ahem, lying around, so I'll definitely be making a proof-of-concept mash when I find some time. I'll even throw in a control by quickly bringing half of the marinade to a boil to denature the enzymes and marinate the same cut of meat in separate containers (with just enough lemon juice to bring pH under 5.3)
If that works, the ultimate goal would be to come up with a method that could be integrated in a brew day, with a slightly larger grain bill to make up for the couple quarts of wort drawn early in the mashing and dedicated to marinating... so I'm guessing either brew a style that plays on the strengths of a light-coloured, highly attenuated finished product, or do a smaller "marinating" mash, draw some of it and add more flavourful grain before raising temperature to a more conventional mashing range.
So that's a bit of a long first post, I've been meaning to join this community for a while, funny that it should be a crazy marinade idea that pushed me to finally subscribe
