Good for the goose: a bath in beer
During the holidays, the rule seems to be: If it's edible or drinkable, put some combination of cinnamon, nutmeg, cardamom, and cloves in it and call it seasonal fare. But if finding fruitcake spices in your beer makes you less than cheerful, brewer and self-described beer philosopher Horst Dornbusch says the Germans have a holiday tradition for you. Their winter beer is dark and strong -- very strong, in fact -- but not spicy.
Dornbusch, a native of Dusseldorf, is encyclopedic and passionate in his knowledge of beer and food. He often begins sentences with "Did you know . . .?" and follows that by recounting historical tidbits such as the fact that Martin Luther was a beer aficionado and married a woman who was trained as a brewer.
The German raconteur's favorite Christmas dish, not surprisingly, is a plump goose basted with a strong German beer. At the end of cooking, the skin on the bird is very dark and crisp, and the gamy meat quite moist. Typically, says Dornbusch, Germans pair their strong beer with a rich, heavy fowl, but they also like the brew with a fatty fish at the holiday table. "They have a Christmas goose or a Christmas carp," he says.
The multilingual Dornbusch contributes regular columns to beeradvocate.com and homebrew magazine Brew Your Own. He also writes for Zymurgy, the American Homebrewers Association magazine; The New Brewer, the Association of Brewers magazine; Brewers' Guardian, an international brewing industry magazine; and Der Biergrosshandel, a German beer wholesalers' magazine. He has written three books on beer.
The Germans have a good reason for not adding spices to their beers. While spices are traditional in British and Belgian seasonal brews, the dapper Dornbusch explains, in Germany brewers are forbidden by a law called the Reinheitsgebot (the beer purity law) from putting anything except water, malted barley, hops, and yeast into beer. So to celebrate the yuletide season and to ward off the winter cold, German brewers simply make their holiday brews darker and stronger.
"The spice of life is not in the bottle," says Dornbusch.
American brewers have mostly embraced the British and Belgian tradition and emptied the spice rack into their holiday offerings. You have to search the shelves to find strong German and German-style winter beers. Dornbusch recommends several that are readily available. You can also find a few American seasonals that revolt against the British tradition and say no to nutmeg. One good local example, Dornbusch says, is the Samuel Adams Holiday Porter.
If you're serving a goose, Dornbusch suggests sipping a cold drink while you baste the bird. German yuletide beer even makes a fine gravy and the cold brew will help cook your goose.
