If you’re reading this column over breakfast, it’s not too early for a nice glass of breakfast beer. Sound odd? Recent years have brought breakfast beer to brunch menus, alongside the classic mimosas and bloody marys.
Those brunch cocktails can be made with beer, too, by the way. Add a sparkling ale such as Calicraft Coast — which is a kölsch — or Calicraft Sparkling Ale to orange juice, instead of Champagne and the bubbles will have the same effervescent, delicious effect on the OJ. Similarly, you can substitute any decent lager for the vodka in a bloody mary.
But there’s no need to mix anything, now that breakfast beers have come into their own. One of the best is Founder’s Kentucky Breakfast Stout, which the Michigan brewery describes as “an imperial stout brewed with massive amounts of coffee and chocolate and aged in oak bourbon barrels in caves that were at one time gypsum mines, beneath Grand Rapid.”
It’s a seasonal release and it can be hard to find — it’s something of a whale, the hardcore craft beer lover’s term for a rare or hard-to-find beer, such as Russian River’s Pliny the Younger. But the newest batch of KBS was released nationally on April 1, so this is your best chance to find it.
Coffee, bacon and stout
There are plenty of other stouts that will work well at breakfast. Coffee stouts alone have proliferated in recent years. Some are infused with actual coffee, while others just take on those flavors from their roasted malt. Particularly good ones include Lagunitas Cappuccino Stout, AleSmith Speedway Stout, Ballast Point’s Victory at Sea and Kona Pipeline Porter. New Belgium’s Imperial Coffee Chocolate Stout — which is part of the Colorado brewery’s Lips of Faith series — and Avery’s Tweak are also fine options. And if you weren’t sure these beers were actually intended for breakfast, Dogfish Head Craft Brewery has one called Beer for Breakfast Stout.
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Non-stouts work, too. Beer made with maple or molasses, for example, will complement your pancake breakfast — they’re good with bacon and eggs, too. Some other beers to keep in mind are Rogue Voodoo Doughnut Bacon Maple Ale and 21st Amendment’s Toaster Pastry. Smoked beers, such as Alaskan’s Smoked Porter, often exhibit noticeable bacon flavors, making them a good match for a traditional spread. And fruit beers — especially sour fruit beers — pair well with hearty breakfasts. Almanac’s Farmer’s Reserve beers are divine with raspberries, citrus, nectarines and pluots.
While I hate to tease you with a beer you’ll have trouble finding in Northern California, this small batch beer from San Bernardino’s Brew Rebellion is just too good not to mention: Saturday Morning Cartoons Breakfast Cereal Milk Stout. Sounds perfect for my Captain Crunch.
Beer pancakes
You’ve chosen your breakfast beer. Might I suggest some beer pancakes? They’re delicious — and easy to make. Just substitute beer for the water in any standard pancake recipe or mix. (I’ve had good results with Krusteaz.)
Using beer instead of water makes the pancakes incredibly fluffy, and imparts just a hint of beer flavor. Dark beers give the pancakes some color, and also seem to make them denser. Hoppy beers make them a bit too spicy, at least in my opinion. Malty, sweeter beers seem to work best. And yeasty beers yield some interesting results. I heartily recommend experimenting. That’s what weekends are made for.
Contact Jay R. Brooks at BrooksOnBeer@gmail.com.
