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Uncorked: New tastes from the tap

Many chefs have discovered the unique flavors that beer can bring to their recipes.

YBOR CITY - At the Tampa Bay Brewing Company, the menu looks a lot like the beer list: Red Eye Ale mussels, Iron Rat Stout crab cakes, pale ale pomace on the goat cheese, weizen in the honey butter, IPA in the gumbo, barley wine balsamic on the Greek salad, Tabasco-stout glaze on the salmon, stout in marinade for the steak and more stout in the shepherd's pie. Even the pizza dough rises on ale.

That's fun for chefs and diners, not just beer drinkers. This kind of cooking celebrates the great diversity and utility in beers as foods and cooking ingredients.

Beer is slowly winning a place next to wine on the table and in the kitchen.

The big thrill in the rebirth of American beer in the last 20 years has been finding beer in more colors than dishwater blond and more flavors than Bud. As American brewers have put grain, hops, yeast and water together in smaller quantities, they have discovered that all beers are not equal. They range from India pale ale to Oktoberfest to Scottish ales and Pilsener lager.

They come in colors from old gold to amber, topaz, carnelian and chestnut And flavors? Well look at that menu again: there's ginger, rosemary, pepper, cinnamon, nuts, flavors you expect in solid food and, if you take time to savor your drink, in beer too.

Exploiting those flavors has been part of the dual mission of Tampa Bay Brewing since Vicky Doble and her late son, John, started it in 1996. If you serve gourmet beer, why not have gourmet food, too. Both fit the Doble motto "Beer is your friend."

With David Doble as brewer, Tampa Bay Brewing's Ybor City brew pub now maintains a range of eight to 10 handcrafted beers on tap, twice what most microbreweries keep on hand.

"We wanted this to be an Early American theme like where our founders sat around eating big hearty meals, drinking good beer and talking about the issues of the day," Doble says. So the bar and much of the 100-year-old brick hostelry is outfitted in copper, the menu hearty and the kitchen always staffed with serious chefs.

Most arrive unaware of beer's cooking utility, but beer has had a place in some European kitchens for a long time. Welsh rarebit without beer is a disappointment. In Belgium, mussels and beer had to come together. That country's national dish of beef and beer, the carbonnade, is only one of many great meaty stews and gravies thickened and darkened with beer, stout or porter. Today, beer merits its own cookbooks, fussy beer and food pairing debates and brewmaster dinners as high-priced as winemaker fetes.

Tampa Bay Brewing's current chef, Ernie Locke, came from Kansas City, Mo., with much of his experience at Italian places like K.C.'s Fedora, but now he uses beer, ale and porter in "almost everything on the menu, except for the Cuban pork, where we stick to traditional flavors."

Boiling brats or shrimp in beer doesn't count in Locke's kitchen; he steams mussels in beer with Thai spices. Vegetables too get an ale bath, whether in the steamer or a saute pan. He uses other beer ingredients: malt in desserts, barley in soup and leafy hops to infuse olive oil. That's just for starters; ales and porters go into marinades, salad dressings and complex sauces.

To cook with beers, you have to appreciate the taste more than the alcohol. In the simplest sense, each beer has sweet elements that come from the malted grain, tarter notes from hops, which are used rather as spice, and the mysterious nuances of the yeast's enzymes.

The kinds of malt and hops and the balance between the two, as well as the method of fermentation or aging, produces a wide spectrum with heavy sweet port on one end and sharp pale ales and lagers at the other.

In between, you can taste and smell spices from clove to pepper, leafy herbs, citrusy notes and even sweet chocolate. Plus honey, raspberries and more in specialty beers.

With a dozen taps of fresh artisan beer, stout and ale 10 steps from the kitchen, Locke uses the beers as more than a spice cabinet. They are a utility, like water or wine used as a cooking liquid, by the pitcherful in steamers, to deglaze pans and build stocks.

"A really hoppy beer works great with spicy dishes and brings out their flavors," Locke says, and he finds pale ale gives more snap to vegetables than the more traditional white wine.

On the other hand: "If you have some sweetness, a malty beer really pulls it out and gives it great colors."

Part of the strength of beer as an ingredient is that it is already carefully crafted. "Our Iron Rat Stout is great with lamb and rosemary. It just takes you somewhere else," Locke says.

Food and beer provide some challenges. For cheese sauces, Locke boils beer first to pasteurize it so the enzymes in the beer and the cheese don't compete. In marinades for red meat, he likes porters and stouts (porters for a softer, sweeter taste).

For the home cook, craft beer is an inexpensive ingredient at $3 or so for a good bottle. Hosts should, however, tell guests when cooking with beer, as with other spirits. Though the alcohol may be cooked out, recovering alcoholics can be sensitive to the flavors.

Cooking with beer at Tampa Bay Brewing taught new tricks to chef Jon Eric Kerns, now the chef at Mangroves Grille in Tampa. Guinness stout made balsamic vinaigrette earthier and less sweet and ale in a fruit salsa sharpened the acid and added a special nuttiness.

"It's given me a lot of flavors that are still with me today," he says.

If we're smart, the flavors of good beer will remain a friend in our kitchens as well as at the bar.

- Chris Sherman, who writes about food and drink, is the author of "The Buzz on Wine" Lebhar-Friedman Books, $16.95. He can be reached at (727) 893-8585 or sherman@sptimes.com

1/2 cup butter

1/2 cup bell peppers, diced

2 tablespoons chopped garlic

2 tablespoons chopped fresh basil

1/4 cup chopped red onions

1/4 cup minced shallots

1/4 cup fresh ginger, minced

1 teaspoon togarashi seven-spice powder

2 pounds mussels

1 cup coconut milk

1 cup Red Eye or other American amber ale

Salt and pepper

Saute peppers, garlic, basil, onions, shallots, ginger and togarashi in butter for 2 to 3 minutes, until vegetables are soft.

Add mussels and saute for one minute. Add coconut milk and Red Eye Ale. Cover.

Cook for two minutes or until all mussels open. Serve with crusty bread.

Serves 2.

* Togarashi is a Japanese flavoring that may may be bought in most Asian markets.

Source: Ernie Locke, Tampa Bay Brewing Company

1 pound sharp Cheddar, diced small

8 ounces cream cheese

3 ounces McBrew's Scotch Ale (or other Scottish style ale)

1 tablespoon Tabasco

3 ounces heavy cream

2 whole roasted red peppers

Heat cheeses, ale, Tabasco and heavy cream until melted but not hot.

Put into blender or food processor with roasted red peppers. Taste for spiciness and add more Tabasco if desired. Serve with sturdy dippers such as pretzels or bagel chips, or as a sauce for vegetables.

* Roast your own peppers for a much better flavor. Scottish ales are caramelized, darker in color and with more malt and smoke flavor than other ales.

Serves 10 to 12 as an appetizer.

Source: Ernie Locke, Tampa Bay Brewing Company