Jon Abernathy

Mulled Beer

So often we never give much thought to how beer is served beyond “chilled and in a glass,” even though many of us beer geeks give plenty of thought to what goes into the beer as it’s being brewed. We get especially excited when the brewing process deviates from the norm—aging in bourbon barrels? Adding unusual ingredients? Blending different beers?—but that’s usually where it ends: once the beer is in our hands, it’s simply for the drinking.

Why is that? Why not experiment with the drinking process in the same way brewers experiment with the brewing process? After all, if adding coconut to my Cream Stout during secondary fermentation makes it better, it stands to reason that adding things to the beer after it’s “finished” can be just as good.

Of course I’m not the first to travel this road: we’re all familiar with the “Beer Cocktail”, the practice of using beer as the base alcohol in a mixed drink. And there are styles that have historically had additives, er, added when drinking: Berliner Weisse is traditionally doctored with sweet syrups (raspberry and woodruff are common); Gose is spiced with salt.

Less familiar is the concept of “mulled beer“, beer that is variously mixed with spices and/or fruit (and possibly other additives) and heated. I would guess that most people familiar with mulled drinks think of them in terms of wine, which is the more common association with mulling. But beers can be mulled too, with pleasing results.

I began thinking about this topic while reading Gregg Smith’s Beer in America: The Early Years, the chapter on Beer Drinks describing the various colonial beer preparations—many of which would raise many a modern eyebrow. In this historical context I would call these drinks “mulled” rather than “cocktails”, and I thought it would an interesting idea to explore.

The most basic way to mull your beer is to simply heat it up and serve it hot. The classic example of this is a beer intended for this very purpose: Unibroue Quelque Chose, an uncarbonated strong cherry ale brewed as a winter beer with heating intentionally in mind.

I don’t have any Quelque Chose, but I do have a homebrewed Apple Ale that I’d been wanting to try heated: a chocolatey brown ale brewed with about eight pounds of apples, cinnamon, and vanilla—a combination that seems a natural fit for serving warm. So in the spirit of experimentation (and the purposes of this article) I warmed some in a saucepan and recorded my impressions:

Fragrance really opens up and it’s a bouquet of fruit and alcohol/yeasty notes. Take a sip and it’s a similar impression—it brings out really aromatic compounds rolling around the mouth, almost volatile in character. Almost a bit more tart (sharp), and the heat brings out some more bitter from the chocolate malt. Interestingly, it gets less harsh as it cools (to “warm” from “hot”).

More traditional methods of mulling beer involve adding spices and perhaps fruit as it heats: roasted apples is a common choice in recipes, along with cinnamon and nutmeg. There is a traditional holiday drink along these lines called “wassail” (not to be confused with Full Sail’s seasonal Wassail Ale) which combines a bottle of strong wine with the equivalent of a six-pack of beer, spices, and roasted apples, and is served hot.

However, there’s another variation of mulling recipes that invokes the colonial drinks described in Beer in America: in addition to the spices and sweeteners (sugar, honey, and/or syrups), eggs are added.

That’s right: eggs.

It sounds off-putting at first, but if you like a good eggnog, then it’s likely you would like this also. Think of it as a “beernog”. A typical colonial preparation of the drink would involve beating eggs and sugar (or molasses or other sweetener) together into a froth, perhaps with a bit of rum or gin, then blending that with hot beer in a large mug. A common practice also was to plunge a red-hot poker (called a “logger head”) into the mix until it boils and spits.

Intriguing, to be sure—but how does it taste?

As it happens, the first result on Google for “mulled beer” is a recipe on wikiHow that incorporates an egg into the beer—and since I already tried a heated plain version of my Apple Ale (think of it as a “control” sample), I knew I had to try this one.

The preparation and recipe is simple: in your saucepan, combine the beer (in this case, another bottle of my homebrewed Apple Ale), and a pinch each of cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, and cloves. Set it to heat on the stove over medium-low heat (I stirred occasionally).

While the beer is heating, prepare your egg: you only use the yolk, so separate it from the white and add two teaspoons of sugar, and whip it until it becomes creamy in consistency and very light yellow. I used normal table sugar, but I don’t see any reason you couldn’t use brown sugar or some other alternative.

The next step is the most important one: you need to temper the egg with the hot beer to prevent the egg from coagulating—in other words, if you just mix the hot beer and egg mixture all together at once, the egg will scramble.

To temper the egg, ladle a few tablespoonfuls of the hot beer into the egg while whisking briskly; then do a few more tablespoons, whisking, until the egg and hot liquid is thoroughly mixed and warmed up. Then, and only then, can you gradually pour the egg mix into the hot pan of beer, stirring constantly.

Let it heat for a few more minutes, but at this stage the mulled beer is basically ready to drink. Taste it, and add honey if you want it sweetened up a bit. When you’re satisfied, pour the drink into a mug and enjoy.

Of course I took notes about this drink as well:

Takes on a coffee-ish aroma, creamy, and in fact reminds me of a coffee nudge or similar. There’s a nice hint of apple and spice in the aroma, too. Taste: still has the fruity apple flavor, somewhat tart and reminiscent of the first “control” drink. Creamy sweet texture to it, kind of a “hot eggnog” thing and the spicing is very nice—creamy nutmeg, tangy clove, the spicy cinnamon all interplay well together. Honestly the fruitiness of the apple is a little distracting—something malty rather than fruity would work well here. Overall, rich and enjoyable and nicely different, worth doing again.

I think I would go with a maltier beer with no fruit for this type of formulation; I have some homebrewed Pumpkin Ale which I think would be really good, but I can imagine other styles working equally well here: Bocks, Brown Ales, Belgian Strong Dark Ales, Winter Warmers, Wee Heavies, and so on.

I’m not sure how a strong hop character would play here; part of me thinks that mulling a highly-hopped beer wouldn’t taste good, another part isn’t so sure. I suppose some more experimentation is in order!

And I encourage all of you to experiment with your beer as well; after all, there’s no reason we have to be constrained to simply opening a bottle and drinking the beer—get creative! Try mulling your beer in various ways: sometimes with fruit, sometimes with eggs. Perhaps simmer an Old Ale with some dried cranberries and a touch of allspice. Or perhaps combine eggs and rum with a Milk Stout and a dash of vanilla.

Who knows—mulled beer could be the next big thing.

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