[Sca-cooks] sour beer question

[Stephanie Ross]

Margaret wrote:
So my questions are: what does alegar actually taste like, is what I have
actually alegar, and can I use this stuff in cooking or should I just pour
it all out and recycle the bottles to some brewer of my acquaintance?


What makes the braggot a "miserable failure"? Describing why you don't like
it might help us diagnose what its problem is. I made alegar using the
mother of vinegar found in Bragg's apple cider vinegar. The base was a
homemade stout my then boyfriend had made, very dark and malty. The alegar
tastes like malt vinegar, which is essentially what it is. If what you have
is alegar, then it should be reasonably clear, with  cloudy strands
floating in it that is the mother. It should smell like vinegar. If it
doesn't smell strongly of vinegar, has stuff floating on top or is very
cloudy, throw it out.

I made three different kinds of vinegar for a class on sauces from Le
Viandier I taught a few years back. My favorite was the cyser vinegar. I
had a couple of cups left over after wracking cyser, so i threw some of the
mother into it and let it sit. It smells wonderfully fruity and is a bit
sweet. The alegar was excellent too. The other I made was vin aigre using
the left overs from a bottle of wine from a party. A friend who is pretty
much an expert on making vinegar told me that i should not have been able
to make vinegar from the ale and wine using the cider mother. Different
bases take different mothers she said, but I had no trouble. 


~Aislinn~
Et si omnes ego non.

"The care of human life and happiness and not their destruction is the
first and only legitimate object of good government." --Thomas Jefferson to
Maryland Republicans, 1809.