Saltwater Brewery - What's Brewing

We are cooking Mexican at the Thursday Night Table this month. The idea has not changed: a dinner you cook at home, built around a Saltwater beer that goes into the pan as well as into the glass. This week we are starting where a weeknight should start — one pan, thirty minutes of quiet simmering, and tacos that come together while everybody wanders in and out of the room.

The beer this week is LocAle, our Golden Ale. It is the one to reach for when a sauce needs loosening rather than dominating. Chipotles in adobo bring smoke and a slow, building heat, and a low-bitterness beer slides underneath all of that without adding a second sharp edge of its own.

One thing to be clear about: there is no kitchen at the brewery. Food on site is whatever truck is parked out front. So this dinner is yours to cook, on your stove, in your own pan, with the windows open. We are just bringing the beer and the recipe.

The beer: LocAle, Golden Ale, 3.7% ABV / 25 IBU

LocAle is 3.7% ABV and 25 IBU, and those two numbers are the whole reason it works in a pan. Reducing a beer concentrates whatever is already in it. At 25 IBU there is very little bitterness in there to concentrate, so what is left after it cooks down is the malt side of the beer rather than the bitter one. Reduce a 75 IBU West Coast IPA like Screamin’ Reels the same way and you get the opposite result: the bitterness concentrates right along with everything else and starts to elbow the chiles out of the way. Save the IPA for the glass.

At 3.7% it is also a genuinely low pour, which matters on a Thursday when there is a school night on the other side of dinner. And since only part of the can goes in the pan, the rest of it is a sensible glass rather than a commitment.

What you’ll need

Plan on about twenty minutes of prep and an hour at the stove, most of which is the pot simmering on its own. The pickled onion sits on the counter while all of that happens, so it does not add to the clock.

For the tinga

• 2 lb boneless, skinless chicken thighs
• 1 1/2 tsp kosher salt, plus more to taste
• 1 tbsp neutral oil
• 1 medium white onion, sliced thin
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 2 to 3 chipotle peppers in adobo, chopped, plus 1 tbsp of the adobo sauce
• 1 tsp ground cumin
• 1 tsp dried oregano
• 3/4 cup (6 oz) LocAle Golden Ale, poured straight from a cold can
• One 14.5 oz can fire-roasted crushed tomatoes
• 1 bay leaf

About the rest of the can: you are only cooking with 3/4 cup, which is roughly half a can. Pour the remainder into a glass for whoever is standing at the stove, or cap it back in the fridge and put it on the table with dinner. Do not dump the whole can into the pan — more liquid than that and the sauce will not tighten up inside the thirty minutes.

For the quick pickled red onion

• 1 small red onion, sliced as thin as you can manage
• 1/2 cup fresh lime juice (about 4 limes)
• 1 tsp kosher salt
• 1/2 tsp sugar

To serve

• 24 to 28 corn tortillas (two per taco, doubled up — 12 tacos, with a few spare for the ones that tear)
• 1/2 cup Mexican crema or sour cream thinned with a little lime juice
• 4 oz queso fresco, crumbled
• 1/2 cup chopped cilantro
• 2 limes, cut into wedges

How to make it

1. Pickle the onion first. Pack the thin-sliced red onion into a jar with the lime juice, salt and sugar, press it down so the slices are submerged, and leave it on the counter for at least 30 minutes while everything else happens.
2. Season and sear the thighs. Pat the chicken dry, salt it, then brown it in the oil in a wide skillet over medium-high heat, about 4 minutes per side. You are after color, not doneness. Move it to a plate.
3. Soften the onion. Turn the heat down to medium, add the white onion to the same pan, and cook 5 to 6 minutes until it goes translucent and picks up the browned bits.
4. Add the garlic and bloom the chiles. Stir in the garlic, chopped chipotles, adobo sauce, cumin and oregano and cook 60 to 90 seconds, until the pan smells like smoke and toasted spice.
5. Deglaze with the LocAle. Pour in the 3/4 cup of LocAle, scrape the bottom of the pan clean with a wooden spoon, and let it bubble for 2 minutes to cook off the raw edge.
6. Build the sauce and settle the simmer. Add the crushed tomatoes and the bay leaf, return the chicken and any juices from the plate, and bring it to a bare simmer — small lazy bubbles, roughly 200°F, not a boil.
7. Simmer 30 minutes, partially covered. Stir every 10 minutes. The chicken is ready when it shreds under a fork; thighs want an internal temperature of at least 165°F, and they pull apart best closer to 175°F.
8. Shred and tighten. Lift the chicken out, shred it with two forks, return it to the pan, fish out the bay leaf, and simmer uncovered 5 more minutes until the sauce clings to the meat instead of pooling.
9. Warm the tortillas. Heat a dry skillet or comal over medium-high and give each tortilla 30 to 45 seconds a side, until it is soft and lightly spotted. Stack them in a clean kitchen towel so they steam and stay bendy.
10. Build the tacos. Double up two tortillas, spoon on the tinga, then crema, queso fresco, pickled onion and cilantro, with lime wedges on the side. Taste for salt at the table.

Heat, swaps and leftovers

Chipotles in adobo are the only source of heat here, so they are also the dial. Two chopped peppers plus a spoon of the adobo lands somewhere a table with kids at it can handle. Three is noticeably warmer. If you are cooking for someone who genuinely does not want heat, use one pepper and a full tablespoon of adobo — you keep almost all of the smoke and lose most of the burn, because the smoke lives in the sauce as much as in the chile.

Thighs are the right cut and it is not close. They shred cleanly, they forgive a long simmer, and they do not go stringy the way breast does. If breast is what is in the fridge, sear it, simmer it 15 minutes instead of 30, and pull it the moment it shreds.

The tinga is better the next day, which makes it a good Sunday-cook-for-Tuesday dish. Cool it, refrigerate it up to four days, and reheat it gently with a splash of water to loosen the sauce back up. The pickled onion keeps about a week in its jar and gets pinker and milder the whole time. What is left over is also excellent on rice, folded into scrambled eggs, or piled onto a baked potato, none of which requires you to make tortillas happen twice in one week.

Serve it with

A cold LocAle, obviously — the same beer that went in the pan, which is the easiest pairing rule there is. Pour it into a glass rather than drinking it from the can; you get more out of it that way. For everyone at the table who is not drinking, make a pitcher of agua de jamaica: steep a cup of dried hibiscus flowers in 4 cups of just-boiled water for 15 minutes, strain, sweeten to taste, and pour it over ice with lime. It is tart and deep red and it cuts the chipotle much the way the beer does, so nobody is stuck with tap water while the rest of the table has something interesting.

If you want something with our name on it sitting on the table, the Saltwater Lifestyle drinkware collection has mugs and insulated bottles — free U.S. shipping over $75.

A plain note on the alcohol

Most of the alcohol from that 3/4 cup cooks off during the 30-minute simmer, but not all of it. By the USDA’s own Table of Nutrient Retention Factors (Release 6), a dish with alcohol stirred in and baked or simmered for 30 minutes retains about 35 percent of it — so roughly two-thirds is gone, and a third is still in the pan, spread across six servings of sauce. That is a small amount by the time it hits a taco, and it is why this dish suits a family dinner. But we would rather give you the real number than tell you it all disappears, because it does not.

Thursday Table: 15% off LocAle to-go

Cooking this one? Come by the taproom, say “Thursday Table” at the register, and take 15% off LocAle to-go — cans to cook with and a couple cold for the table. Good Thursday through Sunday this week.

How it works, plainly: the discount is on packaged beer to go. It does not apply to draft pours at the bar. And it is a code word you say out loud to the person at the register, not something you can type in online. Come in, say it, and it comes off the packaged beer.

While you are here, it is worth checking what’s on the taproom calendar that week.

Where to find LocAle

LocAle gets around South Florida, so ask for it where you buy beer — and if your usual spot does not have it in the cooler, ask them to get it. You can also pick it up at the taproom at 1701 W. Atlantic Ave, Delray Beach, FL 33444 — the first building off the I-95 Atlantic Ave exit.

Taproom hours: Mon 1-7 · Tue-Thu 12-10 · Fri-Sat 12-11 · Sun 12-8.

We do not ship beer. Anything on our website is merch only, shipped within the USA — the beer you have to come get, or find on a shelf near you.

Same idea next time at the Thursday Night Table: one pan, real times, dinner you can actually get on the table after work.

Please drink responsibly.