Saltwater Brewery - What's Brewing

Week one: October is German month, and it opens with brats

A new month at the Thursday Night Table means a new cuisine. September was Mexican. October is German, and the timing is not an accident: Munich's 191st Oktoberfest runs September 19 to October 4 this year, so the festival wraps up this Sunday. Last year, by the festival organizers' initial estimate, about 6.5 million guests visited the Theresienwiese over 16 days, and the tent landlords reported beer consumption of around 6.5 million liters. We are not asking you to match that. We are asking you to simmer eight brats in a can of LocAle.

Here is the month. This week it is bratwurst simmered in LocAle and onions, finished on the grill, with a quick LocAle beer cheese for the pretzels. Next Thursday, pork schnitzel brined in Screamin' Reels. October 15, a Sea Cow beef goulash for the first cool night. October 22, a Passion Pit and apricot glaze on pork tenderloin with warm German potato salad. And on October 29, a roundup of all four on one page. Same theme all month, a different Core Four beer every week.

This one is a backyard dinner. The brewery has no kitchen (food on site comes from the rotating food trucks), so the pot and the grill are yours.

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

LocAle is our Golden Ale, 3.7% ABV and 25 IBU, and this is the week it earns its reputation as the all-rounder. Both jobs here, a 20-minute simmer and a cheese sauce, cook the beer down, and cooking a beer down concentrates whatever bitterness it already has. At 25 IBU there is very little to concentrate, so what is left is the malt side: a little sweetness that feeds the onions and rounds out the cheddar. Put a 75 IBU West Coast IPA like Screamin' Reels in the same pot and the cheese sauce turns bitter. That beer goes in the glass, not the pan, and it gets its turn next week in a brine, which is the one place its bitterness does not build.

You will use two cans: one whole can for the brat pot and half a cup from the second for the cheese. The note under the shopping list covers the rest.

Shopping list

Serves 4 to 6. Prep: about 15 minutes. Cook: about 35 minutes. Start to finish: about 50 minutes.

For the brats

• 8 fresh bratwurst (about 2 lb), uncooked
• 2 large yellow onions, sliced into half-moons
• 2 tbsp unsalted butter
• 1 can (12 oz) LocAle Golden Ale
• 1 cup water
• 1 tsp caraway seeds (optional)
• 1/2 tsp kosher salt
• 1/2 tsp black pepper

For the LocAle beer cheese

• 8 oz sharp cheddar, shredded from a block (about 2 cups)
• 2 tbsp unsalted butter
• 2 tbsp all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup (4 oz) LocAle Golden Ale
• 1/2 cup whole milk, plus a splash to loosen
• 1 tsp Dijon mustard
• 1/2 tsp Worcestershire sauce
• 1/4 tsp garlic powder
• Pinch of cayenne or smoked paprika
• Kosher salt to taste

To serve

• 8 pretzel rolls, or 4 to 6 soft pretzels
• Whole-grain mustard
• Sauerkraut or dill pickles (optional)

About the cans. You need two. The first goes into the brat pot whole: a 12 oz can is 1 1/2 cups, and with a cup of water that comes most of the way up eight brats. The second can gives half a cup (4 oz) to the cheese, and the other cup is the cook's pour. Do not skip the water and double the beer; the pot is there to season the brats and the onions gently while they cook through, not to boil them in beer.

Brat night, step by step

1. Start the onions. Melt 2 tbsp butter in a wide pot or deep skillet over medium heat, on the grill's side burner or the stove. Add the onions, salt and pepper and cook 4 to 5 minutes, stirring, until they soften and turn glossy.
2. Add the brats and the beer. Nestle the brats in with the onions, pour in the whole can of LocAle and the cup of water, and add the caraway if you're using it. Bring it just to a simmer: small, lazy bubbles, about 190°F. Never a hard boil; a boil splits the casings and squeezes out the fat that keeps them juicy.
3. Simmer 15 to 20 minutes. Hold that gentle simmer, turning the brats once halfway, until they are firm and an instant-read thermometer reads 160°F in the thickest one. Lift the brats onto a plate and leave the onions in the pot.
4. Heat the grill. While the brats simmer, heat one side of the grill to medium-high, about 400 to 450°F, and leave the other side low. Clean the grates and oil them lightly. Cooking inside? A cast-iron skillet over medium-high heat does the same job.
5. Make the beer cheese base. In a small saucepan over medium heat, melt 2 tbsp butter, whisk in the flour and cook 1 minute, stirring, until it smells nutty. Whisk in the LocAle in a slow pour, then the milk; it foams up, then settles. Simmer 2 to 3 minutes, whisking, until it coats the back of a spoon.
6. Add the cheese off the heat. Pull the pan off the burner. Add the shredded cheddar a handful at a time, stirring each one in until smooth before adding the next. Stir in the Dijon, Worcestershire, garlic powder and cayenne, then taste for salt. If it tightens up while it waits, loosen it with a splash of milk over low heat.
7. Finish the onions. Turn the heat under the pot up to medium-high and let the liquid cook down, 5 to 8 minutes, until it is nearly gone and the onions are golden and sweet. Keep them warm.
8. Grill the brats. Lay the brats over the hot side and grill 4 to 6 minutes, turning every minute or so, until the casings are browned and blistered. They are already cooked through; this is for color. Warm the pretzel rolls on the cooler side for the last 1 to 2 minutes.
9. Build and serve. Brat in a roll, a tangle of onions, a stripe of whole-grain mustard, kraut if you like it. Pour the beer cheese into a warm bowl for the pretzels and any brat that goes without a roll. Give the brats 2 minutes before the first bite; they are hot inside.

The one temperature that matters. A bratwurst is ground pork in a casing, and the FDA's safe food handling guide lists 160°F as the safe minimum internal temperature for ground meat. The simmer gets the brats there before they ever touch the grates, which is the whole point of simmering first: the grill cannot burn the outside while you wait for the inside, because the inside is already done. Check the thickest brat with an instant-read thermometer at the end of the simmer, and use a clean plate for the cooked brats, not the one the raw ones came out on.

Why simmer first

Brats thrown raw on a hot grill split, flare and char outside while the middle lags behind. Poaching them in beer and onions first cooks them evenly and seasons them from the outside in, and the onions come out of the same pot already sweet and ready for the roll. The grill then has one job, color, and four to six minutes is all it needs. That is also why the pot never boils: a hard boil bursts the casings and pushes out the fat, and a burst brat is a dry brat.

The beer cheese is a classic roux sauce with LocAle standing in for half the milk. Three rules keep it smooth: shred a block of cheese yourself (pre-shredded cheese is coated with starch that turns a sauce grainy), thicken the base before the cheese goes in, and add the cheese off the heat a handful at a time, because boiled cheese breaks into oil and curds. It thickens as it cools, so a splash of milk over low heat brings it back.

On the table with it

Drink what you cooked with: LocAle, cold, in a glass, next to a plate of blistered brats, sweet onions and a bowl of warm beer cheese. At 3.7% it is the right pour for a Thursday with a school night on the other side of it.

For everyone skipping the beer, make Apfelschorle, which is what the German table drinks when it is not drinking beer: half chilled apple juice, half plain sparkling water, over ice. A pitcher takes one minute. Put a bottle of apple juice and a bottle of sparkling water on the list if you are making it.

What's left of the alcohol

Start with what goes in. The whole 12 oz can in the brat pot holds about 0.44 fluid ounces of alcohol (about 13 mL), and the half cup in the cheese holds about 0.15 fluid ounces (about 4 mL). That is the total for the whole dinner before anything is heated.

The USDA's Table of Nutrient Retention Factors, Release 6 lists what stays behind when alcohol is stirred into a dish and cooked: about 40 percent after 15 minutes of simmering and about 35 percent after 30 minutes. The brat pot simmers 15 to 20 minutes and then the onions cook down for another 5 to 8, so plan on roughly a third of the pot's alcohol surviving, and most of that is in the onions and the little liquid left with them, not inside the brats. The cheese is the other direction: the beer simmers only 2 to 3 minutes before the pan comes off the heat, and the same table lists 85 percent retained when alcohol is added to a boiling liquid and taken straight off the heat, so count on most of that half cup's alcohol still being in the bowl.

Put together, that is somewhere around a quarter of a fluid ounce of alcohol (about 7 mL) spread across the onions and the whole bowl of cheese, for 4 to 6 plates. It is a small amount, but it is not zero, and the cheese carries more of it than the brats do.

Want none at all? Simmer the brats in a cup of low-sodium chicken broth plus the cup of water instead of the beer, and make the cheese with a full cup of milk and no beer. Both work. The onions come out a shade less sweet, and the cheese tastes a little more like plain cheddar sauce, which nobody at the table will complain about.

Thursday Table: 15% off LocAle to-go

Coming by? See what's on at the brewery this weekend before you head over.

Where to find LocAle

LocAle gets around South Florida, so ask for it wherever you buy beer, and if it isn't in the cooler, ask the shop whether they can order it. Or 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. Food on site comes from the rotating food trucks.

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

We don't ship beer or sell it online. The website is merch only, shipped within the USA.

Next Thursday, German month continues with Screamin' Reels, our West Coast IPA, in a brine for pork schnitzel.

Please drink responsibly.