Thursday, January 5, 2012

How to make deep fried beer?

Question

I remember reading about the 2010 Texas State Fair "Most Creative" deep-fried food winner, who made fried beer. The news stories I've read were all published around that time (August 2010), where Mark Zable (the fried beer inventor) said he had a super-secret patent-pending process for being able to fry beer.

I don't want to do any of my own experimenting to figure out the process - apparently Zable's first attempts resulted in exploding beer and oil - but I haven't seen any follow-up articles that describe his process. I can imagine that the two major problems would be a) keeping the beer actually inside an uncooked dough pocket and b) preventing the beer-filled dough from exploding in the fryer.

Has Zable's patent been approved and his process published? If so, where can I find it? Has anyone here successfully deep-fried beer and have a technique to share?

Answer

Indeed, Mr. Zable actually applied for a patent -- US application no. 0014320, filed Sept 13, 2010. (Of course, just because he applied doesn't mean the US Patent Office will issue a patent on it.)

His process is, in essence: (1) gelling a liquid beverage; and (2) wraping an aliquot of the gel in a raw "farinaceous dough", selected from the group of pretzel, pizza, bread, and pasta doughs.

The application says he used gelatin as his gelling agent, but the patent (if it issues) would not be limited to gelatin. Once wrapped, the raw snack could be fried immediately or frozen for later use.

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