Playboy Cooks with Beer

Playboy's food & drink editor

For Centuries, The Keenest philosophers and historians have searched without success for a single element motivating the energies of all mankind. Tens of thousands of lectures have been dedicated to studies of such phenomena as the struggle for existence, war, national pride, personal aggrandizement and other universal expressions of energy. Until now scholars have missed the boat completely while the subject itself has been dripping right under their very noses.

The great single dynamic force lifting mankind from the cave to the skyscraper has been beer.

How the colossi of knowledge ever missed this one is hard to understand. Didn't they see the significance of the Mesopotamian seal and engraving showing (continued on page 21) Beer (continued from page 17) men brewing beer over six thousand years ago? Could it be that the students of mythology never learned of the Egyptian god Osiris who taught the people how to make a beverage from barley? Couldn't they discern that the most common staple of man's diet -- bread -- was only beer in solid form, or (to put it another way) that beer was simply liquid bread since both products were a combination of grain and yeast?

And what about Donar? Did they never in all their research come across the German god of thunder and his brown barley juice and the fact that Donar was the special custodian of hops and malt? Maybe it would be helpful to remind some of the more seedy bookworms that Valhalla was a place where heroes fallen in battlefield were given a limitless supply of bior to drink from the skulls of their enemies.

Just ask some of our more solemn pundits about Noah. What did Noah take on the Ark? Nine times out of ten they'll begin reciting names of animals. How many of the gentlemen know of the Assyrian tablet, translated by Prof. Paul Haupt of Johns Hopkins University, which describes Noah's cargo and reads "... with beer and brandy, oil and wine, I filled large jars."

It's time for someone on the campus to remind all our eminent Latin scholars of the fact that Julius Caesar not only crossed the Rubicon in 49 B.C. but climaxed the feat by serving the drink he admired above everything else -- beer. Are there any horn rimmed pedants who haven't heard of Charlemagne? Yet how many can tell us the most significant fact about Charlemagne -- that he personally called all able beer masters to his court and there told them specifically how to brew beer for the best results? Thousands of Shakespearean specialists have studied the bard's genius with awe and perseverance and still haven't discovered the one simple key to Shakespeare's greatness: Shakespeare's father was the official ale taster of Strat-ford-on-Avon. When Catherine the Great felt she was beginning to lose some of her pepper, she followed the advise of her Scotch physician, Dimsdale, and drank English-brewed beer.

November is a good month in which to ask students of early American history why the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock on their way to Virginia. The average crammer will answer, "Because they ran out of provisions." Give the groggy boy a zero for vagueness. Explain to him that the colonists on the Mayflower boarded a vessel that was well stocked with beer and that they had to cut their voyage short, as the journal of the voyage tells us, because of "our victuals being much spent, especially our beere." Ask another history major what John Alden was noted for. Instantly he'll respond, "He won Priscilla Mullen's hand while speaking on behalf of Captain Miles Standish." Wrong again. John Alden is noted for the fact that he was a cooper by trade and was asked to join the Mayflower company for the extremely important task of caring for the vessel's beer kegs.

What was the hardest ordeal Washington and his men endured at Germantown? Listen to Washington's own words as he beseeched the Board of War: "If only beer or cider and vinegar was procured." Should anyone start to quote from Washington's state papers, stop him abruptly and tell him, please, you'd prefer to hear Washington's recipe for small beer written in his own hand in 1757 and used by the brewmaster at Mt. Vernon.

Who were William Penn, Thomas Chittenden, James Madison and Israel Putnam? Owners of breweries, naturally.

What was Louis Pasteur, the French scientist, noted for? Be careful, smart boy, before you answer. Pasteur was known for his Etudes Sur La Biére in which he showed how to control yeast in beer making. No scholar is needed to explain that the great French scientist made bottled and canned beer possible by his process of pasteurization.

Come down to modern times. Who were the first people to experiment with and perfect mechanical refrigeration? Brewers in 1860. Where was the first modern air conditioning unit ever installed? In a brewery in Alexandria, Virginia, in 1880. Through what miracle or magic do we enjoy television today? Any child can tell you that the game he's watching is brought to him not by iconoscopes or kinescopes but through the courtesy of the F. & M. Schaefer Brewing Co.

Any poetry lovers in the house? Let them recall this old English rhyme from Gammer Gurton's Needle:

Back and side go bare, go bare;

Both foot and hand go cold;

But, belly, God send thee good

ale enough,

Whether it be new or old.

Or, if you like A. E. Housman, there's always this bit from his Shropshire Lad:

Malt does more than Milton can

To justify God's ways to man.

Song? Coming right up. Vassar girls have always known that their school was founded by a Poughkeepsie brewer named Matthew Vassar, and they still sing:

And so you see for old V. C.

Our love shall never fail.

Full well we know

That all we owe

To Matthew Vassar's Ale!

Speaking of girls, the first sign of genuine maturity in a girl is the moment she begins to like beer. When a young girl says disdainfully, "Oh, it's so bitter," she hasn't yet explored the principal facts of life. Keep an eye on the lass. As she gets older, she will one day discover the extremely intriguing fact that bitter things can be gustful and exquisite on the tongue. She will hold a thin shell of glass with its bountiful amber brew topped with an ivory collar of foam as thick as cream, and as she drinks she will feel that she is indeed swallowing something rare and rich.

Beer weaves a rare and special magic. It may be a common brand put up in millions of gallons annually. You may drink it from a bottle or bucket, from an exquisite blue crockery stein or from a cool pewter mug. It may taste like many other brands of beer. And yet though you drink it night after night, in frat houses, saloons or in penthouses, the first grand gulp always revives this singular sensation of unexampled goodness. You can drink too much beer but you can hardly get tired of beer.

Can you get drunk on beer? Now any living bartender or any man who has ever wet his whistle with eight or ten glasses of lager knows that beer can put a man into a fuddle, even if it doesn't turn him into a boiled owl. And yet what do the formal scholars say on the subject? As recently as July of this year, Dr. Leon A. Greenberg, Yale professor of physiology, declared that beer is not intoxicating. To be drunk, Prof. Greenberg said, a person's alcohol content of blood must be 0.15 or higher. The average guzzler imbibing 3.7 beer would have to hold two quarts and one pint of beer in his stomach to maintain a 0.15 alcohol level. Furthermore, beer is destroyed at the rate of one third a quart per hour in the body and the amount of beer a man would have to consume to keep up the 0.15 is "physiologically unnatural."

Dr. Greenberg's report immediately stirred up protest by others who argued that one first had to define drunkenness more carefully, that some people got tight on a thimbleful while others could take an ocean of bung juice without showing ill effects and that Dr. Greenberg was simply well under the weather with his own words.

The whole controversy proves that the place for beer is not on a lab table but on a buffet table near a cold glazed ham and a plump brisket of corned beef, beside a platter of garlic-flavored knockwurst or crackling brown sausages, in the vicinity of dark pumpernickel bread, crisp dill pickles, sauerkraut speckled with caraway, stuffed olives and jugs of snappy mustard. Certainly as the holiday season approaches a man can't think of a gorgeous roast Watertown goose without dreaming of Wurzburger Hofbräu -- deep gold, sparkling, rich and flowing like the Rhine itself.

When the ice box is raided and the remains of the cold roast turkey are torn apart and tenderly laid between thin slices of rye bread, only one thing is needed for perfection itself -- the pilsener glass of cold beer sparkling and happy as hops. No man needs to be told that the only partner with a dozen cherrystone clams or a fried deviled crab is a bottle of dry pale ale. Even such sauce dishes as Hungarian beef goulash or hot curry of shrimp are best sent on their way with mugs of creamy beer. Certainly the annual mid-winter beefsteak dinner of the alumni would be impossible without two or three kegs of cold beer freshly tapped for the occasion.

Every Playboy drinking beer should know a few simple facts about the art of the brewmaster. Beer is a beverage made from malt, hops, yeast and water. It has an alcoholic strength of about 3.5 by weight. The term beer includes lager beer, the favorite brew in the United States, as well as ale, stout and porter.

The malt in beer is made by germinating barley. The actual brewing process consists of four main steps. First of all the malt is boiled with water. The liquor thus produced is called wort (rhyming with curt). Secondly, hops are added and boiled. Hops give the brew its snappy, bitter flavor. In the third step, the hops are removed and yeast is added to start fermenting the brew. Finally, after a fermentation period, the yeast is removed and the beer is aged.

Most of the beer we drink now is called lager beer, a pale light brew introduced into the United States from Germany during the middle of the last century. Besides malt, corn and rice are used to make the wort for lager beer. These cereals give the lager its light body.

The difference between lager beer and ale is this: In brewing beer, a yeast is used which settles to the bottom of the vat during fermentation. Beer is fermented at a low temperature. Ale, on the other hand, is fermented at high temperatures, between 50 and 70 degrees. The yeast used to make ale remains at the top of the liquid during fermentation. Because of these differences, ale acquires a more pronounced hop flavor than beer. Ale is sometimes of a higher alcoholic content than beer and is more bitter and racy to the taste.

Stout is a dark ale with a rich sweet malt flavor. Stout is almost black in color because of the carmelized malt used in its brewing. The famous Guiness' stout is made with a strain of yeast that has been in continuous use since 1759.

Porter is a form of ale made like stout from a very dark malt. It is less bitter and less strong than stout.

Bock beer is a special springtime brew made from a combination of barley and wheat malt. Specially selected hops are usually reserved by the brewmaster for bock beer. It was first brewed in Ein-beck, Germany. In time the name of the town was corrupted to ein bock -- meaning goat. The butting goat is still used in advertisements for this-special German brew.

New beer drinkers often think that all beer tastes alike. And, as a matter of fact, a number of beers are similar in flavor to each other. Some brewers want it this way because, they feel, public taste in the United States demands a certain flavor norm which they have attained. Nevertheless there are many flavor differences which the veteran beer drinkers quickly detect. If you're in an experimental mood some night, pour a half dozen different brands of light beer into glasses. Take a careful swallow of each and you'll begin discerning surprising variations in flavor, dryness, sparkle and head.

In this country one soon learns to recognize the differences between the grand old midwestern beers and beers turned out by smaller regional breweries. Certainly some of the smaller breweries have succeeded in creating brews that are incomparable even when one thinks of fine German beers and English ales. Anyone, for instance, who has ever drunk beer from the Adam Scheidt brewery in Norristown, Pa., especially their double dark beer, has enjoyed a really magnificient brew.

One must have had some drinking experience to appreciate the German beers thoroughly. Brews, for instance, like the Löwenbräu Dark Münchener or the Wurzburger Hofbräu will sometimes impress the uninitiated as being almost too smooth, too velvety. On the second or third trip, however, they really ingratiate themselves until finally we learn to drink them like champagne with such luxury foods as shad roe, baked stuffed lobster and planked filet mignon.

When you buy beer, remember to store it in a cool dark place. In the refrigerator it should be kept on the bottom shelf to avoid excessive chilling. Americans don't drink their beer at room temperature as the British do. Nor are they as fussy as the German gents who take small thermometers with them into rathskellers and test the temperature of the beer before they draw the first gulp. Beer generally is best when served at temperatures from 40 to 45 degrees. When it is colder, the flavor becomes dull and clammy.

While Americans are inveterate beer drinkers, they have not yet learned the art of beer eating -- beer used in cooking. It's not a new idea, and some great epicurean classics have included beer. Everybody has tasted the beer in Welsh Rabbit. Equally fine is the Flemish carbonnade of beef, a rich beef stew made with beer and renowned since the days of Escoffier. Carp with beer is esteemed not only in central European countries but in France, Belgium and Germany as well. For generations the British have used ale to make anything from beer soup to dessert fritters. In the Chesapeake Bay section cooking sea-food with beer is a hollowed tradition. More and more professional as well as amateur chefs are discovering that beer, like wine, can be used to enrich and deepen the flavor of many wonderful viands. Like wine, beer loses something of its original identity in cooking. A faint trace of the bitterness remains while a new irresistible blend of flavors emerges. The following recipes have all passed the Draconian standards of Playboy's test kitchen.

[recipe_title]Braised Beer Steaks[/recipe_title]

Serves 4

Cut two peeled large onions in half, then cut lengthwise into long, thinnest-possible slivers. Place onions in a heavy saucepan with 2 cloves of garlic chopped exceedingly fine. Add 3 tablespoons butter, and place pan over a moderate flame. Simmer slowly until onions begin to brown, stirring frequently. Remove pan from flame. Stir in 3 tablespoons flour, mixing well. Set pan aside.

In another pan, a large skillet, melt 4 tablespoons fat. When the fat is hot, place 4 six-ounce steaks, 1/2 inch thick, in pan. The steaks should be semitender cuts like top sirloin steaks or chuck steaks. Cook the steaks until medium brown on both sides.

To the onion mixture add 2 cups of stock (or 2 cups of boiling water in which 2 bouillon cubes have been dissolved), a four-ounce can of mushrooms, pieces and stems together with their juice, 1/2 cup tomato juice, 2 cups of beer, 1/2 teaspoon salt, 1/4 teaspoon pepper and 1 large bay leaf. Mix well with a wire whip. Add the browned steaks. Return pan to a very low flame. Cover with a tight lid and simmer slowly until meat is tender, about 2 hours. Stir occasionally to keep gravy from sticking to pan bottom. Skim fat off gravy. Season to taste. Serve gravy unstrained over steaks.

Alongside the beer steaks on the serving dishes, heap generous portions of buttered egg noodles and green string beans. Crisp hard rolls, a salad with scallions and cold dark beer are welcome at this table. You can conclude the bull session with creamy Camembert cheese and crackers followed with more dark beer.

[recipe_title]Cheese Soup With Ale[/recipe_title]

Serves 2-3

A double boiler is necessary for this dish to keep the cheese from becoming stringy. If you do not own a double boiler, you might rig one up by pouring an inch or two of water into a large saucepan and then placing a smaller pan into the larger one so that the top section floats without touching the bottom of the lower pan.

In the top part of the double boiler over simmering water, put 1 can of undiluted cream soup. It may be cream of celery soup, cream of chicken soup or any other light colored cream soup. Add 1 cup of ale. Mix well. While the liquids are heating, cut 1/2 pound of natural cheddar cheese into cubes about 1/2 inch thick. Add cheese to pan. Add 1/2 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce, 1/8 teaspoon celery salt and 1/8 teaspoon paprika. Cook slowly, stirring frequently until cheese is melted and soup is very hot.

With this soup, bread croutons are a sine qua non. To prepare the croutons, cut 2 slices of white bread into small squares about 1/2 inch thick. Place them in a shallow baking dish -- a pie plate will do -- in a moderate oven, stirring occasionally, until brown. Or, as a timesaver, cut ordinary toast into 1/2 inch squares. Sprinkle the bread croutons over the cheese soup just before serving.

[recipe_title]Shrimp And Beer Gravy[/recipe_title]

Serves 4

In a large saucepan put 2 cans of beer, 2 beer cans of water, 2 smashed cloves of garlic, 1 large onion cut into 1/4 inch thick slices and 1 teaspoon salt. Bring the liquid slowly to a boil. Add 1 1/2 pounds of shrimp. Cook until the liquid again comes to a boil and simmer 5 minutes. Strain and save the cooking liquid. Peel the shells from the (concluded on page 61) Beer (continued from page 22) shrimp and remove the vein running down the back.

Cut as fine as possible 2 tablespoons onion and 1/4 cup green pepper. Put the onion and green pepper in a saucepan with 1/4 cup butter. Heat over a moderate flame, stirring frequently, until onion is yellow, not brown. Remove pan from flame. Stir in 1/4 cup flour, mixing until no dry flour is visible. Stir in 1/2, teaspoon dry mustard. Gradually add 2 cups of the liquid in which the shrimp were cooked and 2 bouillon cubes. Stir well with wire whip. Return to a moderate flame and simmer slowly 5 minutes. Add shrimp to sauce and simmer 3 minutes more. Add I teaspoon prepared mustard and 1/2 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce. Mix well. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Serve the shrimp and beer gravy with white rice and broiled tomato halves. Keep the beer steins filled before, during and after the shrimp course. Conclude the session with fair size pieces of apple strudel and hot coffee.