Nancy Warner was making jelly and she ran out of fruit to flavor it with, so she used the next available thing: Beer.
One winter the Vermont architect and archaeologist, who canned like crazy as a hobby, found herself with lots of cans, lots of sugar and fruit pectin, but no fruits to give her jelly flavor. But she did have a lot of beer, and she had heard of jelly made with wine. So she began experimenting, and today she's moved into a commercial kitchen and makes 3,000 jars a week.
Even though the jelly retains much of the beer taste, sweetened by the added sugar, polishing off a jar will not put you at risk of a traffic stop. The cooking and chemical interaction with the sugar removes the alcohol.
I suppose technically the jelly could be made with any beer. A peanut butter and Guinness sandwich sounds intriguing, but I would hope good taste would prevent the creation of Blatz jelly. Consuming Blatz without the benefit of its wisdom-deadening alcoholic properties? That way lies madness.
Considering there are strawberry flavored beers and suchlike, one could sort of "close the loop," so to speak, with a fruit-flavored-beer jelly.
ReplyDeleteMy parents used to periodically have wine jellies when I was a kid but I don't remember ever tasting them; I guess they assumed not all the alcohol had cooked out.
The pictures showed a few of them that seemed to be based on fruit-flavored ales, so I think you're right.
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