Beer and Wine Bresaolas

Both bresaolas immediately after hanging in fridge.

Bresaola is a salted air cured beef. Generally the cut used is an eye round. The meat traditionally spends some time in a wine brine. The flavors of the wine infuse into the meat, while the low pH, tannins, enzymes, alcohol, and various other compounds variously help break down and alter the cut. Beer has a lot of similar characteristics. Beer has a low pH, various alcohols, tannins, esters, and volatile aromatic oils. Beer also is fragile. Light and oxygen degrade the flavor rapidly. I have been brewing for 10 years and since starting meat curing have been curious about the synergies between beer and cured meats. Bresaola seemed like the perfect place to start experimenting. This first attempt to prove out the concept, and see how well beer can be used in this application. To compare, a traditional bresaola was cured alongside the beer version though there were differences aside from just the type of alcohol used.

Recipe 

All ingredients stated as percentage of the mass of the cut of meat. 

Beer 

Beer brined bresaola.

• 1 Eye Round
• 66.6% Alchemist Focal Banger IPA
• 5% Salt
• 3% Garlic
• 1.5% Pepper
• 1 Bay Leaf

Beer stirred to remove carbonation. Mixed in ingredients in bag. Added meat. Double bagged to avoid leaks. 7 days in brine, tied, and hung in fermentation chamber. Noticed that percentage of weight lost seemed high, so on day 14, re-submerge in brine for 10 seconds. Cut down at 27 days. 

Wine

Traditional wine brined bresaola

• 1 Eye Round
• 66.6% Malbec 
• 5% Salt
• 3.7% Garlic
• 1% Pepper
• 0.4% Thyme
• 2 Bay Leaves  

Brine mixed and added to bag along with Eye Round. Double bagged to avoid leaks. 7 days in brine, tied, and hung in fermentation chamber. Noticed that percentage of weight lost seemed high, so on day 14, re-submerge in brine for 10 seconds. Cut down at 27 days.

Both the wine and beer bresaolas lost weight rapidly. The beer one ended up losing a lot of water weight very quickly. It fell to 56% of pre-cure weight after only 12 days. In the following  8 days it settled at 50%. The wine bresaola wasn't much better. After 12 days it was at 61% of pre-cure weight and in the following 8 days the weight settled at 52%. The high surface area to volume ratio of these items along with the dryness in the fridge led to a faster drop in weight than is optimal. While in this case, a dry skin did not develop leaving an uncured center, the curing was clearly quite uneven in both cases. A slower more controlled weight loss would have been much better. In subsequent cures, adding some open containers of water to the fridge while curing raised humidity during the curing process and helped lead to a more even cure.

Outcome

The first thing that you noticed with the beer bresaola was the distinct stale hoppiness in the aroma. This was not stale in a bad way. The funk from the cured meat along with the herbs used in the brine and the oxidation combined and worked quite nicely together. Some of the bitterness came through in the flavor of the meat. A lot of the citrus and floral notes that you get from a delicately hopped IPA were nowhere to be found. That should have been expected. The volatile aroma compounds are very unlikely to survive a month-long dry cure. Compared to the wine brined product, which ended up taking on a beautifully dark, fruity, tannic, floral, acidic wine character, the beer cured version was less than spectacular. 

Nonetheless, it was clear that using beer as a base for a brine showed a lot of promise. The oxidized beer flavor was far from "frat basement" stale beer character. Using an IPA was probably not the best choice, predictably so. Using a beer that takes more kindly to oxidation and one that has less bitterness would be the clear next step here. Using a Belgian tripel or quad, a lambic, an english barleywine, and eisbock would probably lead to a much better product.