Food - Drink
How To Use Beer To Elevate Smoked Meat
By BETHANY SWANSON
Finding the methods and styles that work best for you is the key to honing your meat-smoking skills, and controlling the moisture level in your smoker is one of the techniques you'll want to master. While water is an obvious choice for adding moisture, beer, it seems, works even better.
Having a water basin in your smoker acts as a humidifier and helps regulate the temperature, but by using beer instead, your meat will absorb the flavor of the beer as it evaporates. You can also spritz your meat with some beer before cooking, or incorporate beer in a sauce or marinade.
It’s also important to consider which types of beer work best with the meat you’re cooking. For instance — American lager or a rauchbier pairs well with sausage, a wheat or German lager is a great match for chicken, and blonde ale makes for a great marinade when paired with herbs.