Braised Hoisin Beer London Broil

Photo taken from The Bitten Word

I had a london broil in the freezer that I've been wanting to use before it gets too freezer burnt and found this recipe using beer, beef, hoisin and ginger. I thought it might be pretty tasty and it was! I used Alaska Brew Company's Barley Wine to replace the ale and the london broil instead of the ribs, but everything else was pretty much as included on the recipe. We had two meals from it. the first time we had chucks of the meat with soba noodles and the second meal we shredded the meat up and had hoisin beef sandwiches on hoagie rolls. They were yummy!

Alaskan Amber Balls

Here's another recipe I tried using Alaska Brewing Company Beer. This recipe came from their collection of online recipes. They look like hamburger don't they! But they aren't! These were made with The Baltic Porter Ale - but would be good with the amber too. Any easy recipe that doesn't take very long to make - all the more pleasant to spend time with your family and friends eating them!

Beery good Peanut Brittle

Here's an interesting twist on peanut brittle that I tried out using Alaska Brew Company's Seasonal Baltic Porter Ale. Its got a very good taste and I like the spice of the cayenne mixed with the sweet of the sugar.

• 1 C toasted peanuts
• ½ tsp flaked sea salt
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 T cold butter, diced
• 1 C sugar
• ¼ C light corn syrup
• 1 C dark beer
• 1/8 tsp chipotle powder

Butter baking pan or line with silpat, set aside. Mix first 4 ingredients, set aside. In a large saucepan, mix beer, sugar, corn syrup, and chipotle powder. Boil over moderate heat for 12 min until golden in color. Stir in peanut mixture and quickly spread on prepared pan. Let cool and break into small pieces. Store in an airtight jar.

I've made it twice. The first it wouldn't harden up so I had to pop it in the oven to reheat it and poured in on a foil-wrapped pan. The second time I got out the old cookbook and followed the directions with the candy thermometer, heated it to 300 and got a big mountain of candy-hunk. I popped that in the oven to heat up and again, poured it in a pan and when it cooled it was the right thickness and tasted good but it wasn't clear like it should have been. Plus I didn't realize that my plastic stirring spoon at melted when it got so hot until the candy cooled and there were plastic strands mixed in with the peanuts when the brittle cooled. Enough to take out a tooth!

So I suggest that if you have a recipe you like you should use it and just substitute the beer for water or at least follow you directions. I'm not going to try again, although I did enjoy drinking the left-over beer that didn't go into the brittle.

Alaska Brewing Company Tour

Our friend Todd was down visiting and since his restaurant in Talkeetna, Mountain High Pizza Pie, is one of the top 15 sellers of Alaskan Brew Company beer in the world, he was asked to stop by for a VIP tour. So of course we thought we better tag along in case he needed any help, ya know.

The company started out with the name of Chinook Alaskan but they got sued by Chinook Winery in California so they dropped that name and trademarked Alaskan. Long-time employee, Tony gave us a pretty good tour and plenty of opportunity to taste some samples.


After a few tastings from the sample roo, one of which was delicious dark beer they are calling Dunkel which they are only selling in kegs. I'm not even sure if you can get it outside of Juneau, Tony gave us the general beer-making spiel and then we dawned our safety glasses and signed away any liability and entered the inner sanctum. I forgot to take any pictures until we were almost done with the tour but here are a few snaps.

Here's our guide Tony - sorry its so out of focus I was so excited I just snapped.



This is a long hallway filled with thousand gallon tanks filled with different beer. There were hoses, compressors, and gauges.


They were bottling their 2009 Smoked Porter. Its a seasonal dark beer that they have been making since the late 80s and a great dark beer. You could smell the influence of the beer in the bottling room. We got to taste one right off the line.


Probably the best room was the room where all the beer boxes are stacked up waiting to be shipped out! Here is Todd and Claudia in front of a stack of Amber.


and me with the Smoked Porter.



and Tim with more Amber.