Cooking Bratwurst with Craft Beer

My friend Harvey backed the silver with red leather interior Jaguar XJ6 dead center between two grubby, garbage-strewn campsites that were pitched near the Turn 3 fence at Road America.

Located in the glacially carved swells of Wisconsin north of Milwaukee, the track’s four miles of undulating asphalt had been drawing sports car racers and fans from all over the world for almost two decades. The neighbors covered in dried mud – who obviously were on, like, Day 4 of their stay – rubbed party-ravaged eyes as Harvey began setting up our little section of ground on that hot, muggy afternoon in the early 1970s.

Out of the Jag came coolers, collapsible chairs, a small folding table and a full-sized Weber kettle in immaculate black, ready for assembly. Briquettes were lit and out came a six-pack of Schlitz cans – the kind you needed a “church key” to open. To the horror of the neighbors, the beer was dumped into a foil pan on the grill rack.

A plastic bag of onions was dumped into the beer and then a stick of butter. The pan was placed over the hot grill until bubbles and steam began to rise. Then a large bag of brats from the cooler was emptied into the pan.

About this time, the pace car came up over the small hill out of Turn 2 and led the snarling and bellowing field of sports cars past us on their warm-up lap.

Several roaring, full-speed laps later, the brats were deemed sufficiently boiled and the coals at the right temperature to remove the butter/onion jacuzzi from the Weber and put the gleaming sausages on the grill grate.

Three laps of constant tending later, the brats had browned up and were shooting mini-geysers of juice onto the briquettes as the cars wailed past. Into the buns and onto paper plates they went.

The neighbors, who had watched the two hoity-toity University of Wisconsin Madison alums with mild disgust were waved over for hot brats and beer that was actually cold. Harvey could have been appointed pope had the mud-crusted neighbors been elector cardinals.

Those lovingly prepared German sausages were memorable. Juicy, perfectly browned and that wonderful masticated blend of onions and hops. The snap of the casing, the burst of steam, the rivers of liquefied fat.

That was not the first time I’d had beer brats. Just the best time. Brats, beer and the supercharged drama of sports car racing. Terrific.

There was hardly universal agreement on the new approach to a very old food tradition. Not everybody liked it, but around the time of that muggy day at Road America boiling brats in a beer bath became a craze. Bad beer, lore had it, turned great bratwurst into tremendous bratwurst. And in Wisconsin, all the proper ingredients were both near and dear.

The Milwaukee area was a favorite destination for emigrating Germans in the early and middle decades of the 20th Century. Among those émigrés were some of the finest sausage makers (or wurstmachers) and brewers in the world.

Many of the names of the higher quality brewers are familiar: Schlitz, Pabst, Miller, Heileman, Blatz. The names of the sausage makers are less known nationally but revered by the locals. At some point along the way, their products found their way into the same pots, and cookouts have never been the same in the Badger State.

“It’s definitely a regional preference,” Megan Dorsch of Nueske’s Applewood Smoked Meats in Wittenburg, Wisconsin says of hot-tubbing brats and beer. “We Wisconsinites love brats and I think that anyone who is eating a fresh, unsmoked brat around here, we love giving them the beer bath first.”

The ingredients – with personalized twists (like seasoned salt, red pepper flakes, hot peppers, garlic) – remain constant: Sheboyganstyle bratwurst, cheap lager, chopped onion and butter.

The process is also inflexible. Boil until sausages are cooked and plumped and then, low and slow (split casings kill the gig) over charcoal or gas burners. “It adds flavor,” Dorsch says. “It gives it a rich flavor and it’s just tradition here in Wisconsin.”

Virtually everybody in Wisconsin agrees beer and brats are essential together. Not everybody agrees on what point in the process they should get together. Forget about taking sides on Governor Scott Walker’s anti-union campaign. How do you like your brats?

College friend Rob Reuteman just won’t take the plunge on beer brats. “I think it’s stupid,” said Reuteman, a native of Wauwatosa.“If you boil brats in beer, all the essential spices bleed out of the brat into the beer. You’re left with a less tasty brat.”

Jon Gabe of Usinger’s in Milwaukee also says nein to beer brats.

“At Usinger’s, we are not fond of cooking brats in beer,” Gabe said. “Similar to a brewer who carefully crafts a beer, the Usinger wurstmachers make sausages that are spiced just right. When cooked in beer, the flavor and consistency of the brat changes. We are firm believers that brats and beer go together. However, drink the beer and grill the brats, but that is as close as the two should get.”

Gabe offered to send The Beer Connoisseur some brats gratis – if we promised not to mix them with beer until they were separately introduced to the mouth.

Joseph Conrad was born, raised and fed at ground zero of the ground zero of American wurst making – Sheboygan. He has a third take on beer, brats and their mating habits – a simmering pot of onions, butter and beer.

“OK,” Conrad said, “this whole boiling brats in beer stuff is pretty hokey to real Sheboygan Germans. When I was growing up you always had a simmering pot for the grilled brats and that’s where you put them AFTER the grilling.

“I still like the original method I grew up with but, with enough good beer – not the cheap stuff we’d use in the simmer pot – it’s all good.”

Good Sheboygan Germans also apparently either abhor waste – or love flavor.

“A little known thing was that, the mess left in the simmer pot after the original barbecue grilling, eating, and partying could be made into what we called brat soup by adding more cans of beer, cutting up the leftover brats into chunks, heating and then eating,” said Conrad. “You needed a young and strong stomach though for that.”

Strength of stomach also comes into play when choosing condiments. Those considered semi-essential include sauerkraut and a strong German-style mustard. Nothing green should ever top a brat.

The personal preference here is ‘kraut, standard yellow mustard and a hearty smear of horseradish. Another personal preference is avoiding the big, doughy rolls that make sausages look so Martha Stewart-fake in advertisements. A good hot dog bun off a super market shelf will allow more taste to seep through than will a “roll” from an upscale French bistro.

The bottom line on beer brats is a wonderful one from Conrad, which beer lovers certainly should be able to get behind.

“We do not advocate the par-boiling method,” he said, “but we never ever turn down good cooked brats regardless of the method used. Correction, we would turn them down if inadequate supplies of GOOD beer were not provided.”

With in-state craft brands like New Glarus, Stevens Point and Lakefront, among others, currently competing with the traditional German-American brewers, there’s plenty of good beer available until this debate is resolved. Or not!