Fermented Friday: Spicy Beer Cocktail

Fermented Friday: recipes featuring yeast, wine, beer or some form of fermentation

Sooooo, I tried a beer recipe that falls more under Weird Recipe Wednesday.  I like the components separately and was intrigued by a recipe that mixed them into beer.  I figured this was the perfect opportunity to test it out.........annnnnnd it wasn't even drinkable.  Fail.  I even had my brother try some in case it was just me.  Still a no-go.  I snapped a picture, but I'm not going to post the recipe.  It's definitely not worth repeating, and I didn't want to waste another beer trying to tweak it.  I will not be stirring lime, sriracha and Worcestershire into my beer anytime soon.

I have a bad habit of trying to save recipe failures.  Hmmm, what can I do with this?  I thought about a spicy beer bread, but I really didn't want a loaf of bread that tasted like this mixed beverage.  Sometimes further fiddling yields amazing results, but there are also times I end up wasting even more ingredients in the process.  Every once in a while I'm wise enough to leave well enough alone and realize it will only get worse.

Just as I was about to dump this concoction down the drain, I decided to turn it into a beer syrup.  I added 1/4 cup sugar and boiled it down until thick and syrupy.  It tasted okay but what do you do with a spicy beer syrup?  Candy coated nuts?  There may be some potential there, but not with these flavors.  At this point I decided to call it quits. Some things just aren't worth saving.

Even when a situation doesn't turn out as you'd hoped, you can learn from it.  What I took away from this failure was a tip about making beer syrup.  The exact time it takes to reduce beer to a syrup depends on the amount of added sugar and the temperature.  However, there is a good visual indicator that your beer syrup had reached the right consistency.  After slowly simmering the solution will suddenly begin to boil vigorously due to the high sugar concentration.  At least it was entertaining and educational, even if it wasn't too tasty.

Food for Thought: "To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong." -Joseph Chilton Pearce