Beer Me!

So, I've discovered that you can make jelly out of just about anything - wine, beer, fruit juice, coconut milk, whatever you want - if you have pectin or a pectin source (green apples) and sugar.  This savory, gelatinous spread to the left here is made out of beer.  Yes, BEER.  Adapted from a recipe in the charming tome on jams and jellies, Christine Ferber's Mes Confitures, I made this with Deschutes Brewery Black Butte Porter, cinammon, and cardamom.

Black Butte Porter has chocolate and nutty undertones, which is exactly why I chose it.  I cored, chopped, and cooked 2 pounds of Granny Smith Apples to create a juice for pectin; ran the apples through a sieve to get rid of the skin, then poured the juice/paste over a cheesecloth.  I'm getting much better at this!  Combine apple juice, beer, sugar, cinammon sticks, cardamom, and a little extra pectin for gel insurance, and brew-infused wafts of sweet steam filled my apartment.  The resulting jelly is a nutty, thinly-sweet & spicy mixture that tastes great with peanut butter.  I'm going to try roasting cubes of squash with the Porter Jelly as a sort of marinade, and I do believe this would be great with pork - either on pork chops, pulled pork BBQ, or ribs.  Beer jellies are on my list to keep trying and creating my own recipes.  It's simply delicious!  xo, AB