How to Make the Best Beer Brats
While it’s never not a time for beer-brats, I’m putting fingers to keyboard in mid-September, perhaps the beginning of their prime time. Fall, football, and the imminent coming of Oktoberfest all come together to make beer brats the obvious choice for this weekend’s menu. So let’s look at beer brats, what they are, where they come from, and how to make them perfectly, looking at temperatures and maybe even dispelling a myth or two along the way. Heat up the grill, it’s sausage time!
Get the tools for this cook here:
Wisconsin-style beer brats
When we talk about beer brats, we’re really talking about Wisconsin-style beer brats. While there is debate on the issue, the style seems to have originated in the vicinity of Sheboygan. The standard, accepted version consists of a bratwurst sausage simmered in a bath of beer—usually a simple lager—sliced onions, and a little butter. The sausage is served in a crusty roll, often with some good spicy brown mustard, piled high with the onions from the bath.
As for the sausage, a standard Wisconsin-style brat like those found at most grocers is exactly the kind you want. They should be fully cooked, obviously, with a firm, snappy casing and nice, juicy inside.
A traditional German food?
Beer brats are a favorite for many people holding their own Oktoberfest celebration. After all, this is a traditional German food, right? Not so much. While the ingredients smack of German cuisine, the dish itself is pure Wisconsin. In fact, the word bratwurst, translated from the German, literally means “grill-sausage,” as opposed to brühwurst, “simmer-sausage,” to which this preparation is closer.
If you like going to a local watering hole and ordering a plate of these, enjoy them here, but don’t expect to find them in a Biergarten in the old country!
How long to boil beer brats
While people will boil the brats for a long time, it isn’t necessary to do so. Once the proteins cook, they don’t admit any beer into them. So no more beer will get in there. And the longer you boil them, the less snappy your casing will be—it will start to soften and almost dissolve. So cooking them just to the point where they are safe to eat and fully cooked gets you brats that are ready sooner with no degradation in quality. Cook to temp, not to time.
We had our resident Wisconsonian ThermoWorker taste our finished product, and he gave it his hearty seal of approval, even though the brats weren’t stewed as long as cooking to a certain time would dictate.
Bratwurst doneness temps
Brats are ground meat, so we have to cook them to ground-meat temperatures. We like to get sausage up to 165°F (74°C) to make sure it is safe to eat. We used our Smoke X4 with optional waterproof needle probes to track the temps during the cook, setting our high-temp alarm for 165°F.
Why we use a needle probe
Why use the waterproof needle probe? First, because it’s waterproof, obviously. Simmering sausages in a vat of beer means waterproofness matters.
Second, we love the pin-prick hole left in the sausage. And Smoke X4 is exceptionally easy to set up. We took the receiver inside with us while the bratwursts bathed and went back out to grill them when they were cooked through.
Serving beer brats
Remove the brats from the bath and place them over direct heat on your grill and cook just until browned. Then get them ready to eat.
Bet some good brat buns for this. The best ones will have a bit of a crisp to the exterior and will have some structure. Use a nice slather of spicy brown mustard and pile those onions up on top, and you’re good to go. Well, unless you want some warm sauerkraut on there, too. The more-structured bun will take up all the juice that comes along with your beer-stewed onions and kraut.
You can, of course, caramelize some onions to go on as well. Onions-two-ways is delicious, but not necessary or even very traditional. But it IS very delicious.
Do I need a smoker or grill to make beer and brats?
We prepped our brats on a grill—a common practice among tailgaters. But you can just as easily make them on the stove at home. Put the beer and onions in a pot, nestle the brats in, and cook them just like above. But then, rather than grilling them off once they cook, you can sauté them in a hot pan with a little butter until browned.
Caveat: on the beery onions
Our short-simmer method did turn up one slight problem, if you want to call it that. Our onions didn’t have time to cook down quite as far as we might like them to go. Don’t get us wrong, they were still limp, beer-infused, and delicious. But they could, conceivably, be limper. To help in this, use a mandoline to slice your onions ultra-thin, or give them a few minutes saute before they go in the beer. Or you could start them in the beer before you add the brats. In fact, that’s what we’d probably do next time.
But even if you don’t, by the time you put a second batch of brats through the bath, your onions should be well softened.
Wisconsin Beer-brats recipe
Ingredients
- 10 bratwursts
- 2 large yellow onions sliced ¼” thick or thinner
- 2 large cans lager-style beer
- 2 Tbsp butter
- Sauerkraut (warmed) for werving optional
- Spicy brown mustard for serving
- Buns for serving
- More onions for caramelizing for serving optional
Instructions
- Preheat your smoker or grill for two-zone cooking. Use Smoke X4 and Billows BBQ control fan to get smoker up to 350°F (place your air probe over the deflector plate if there is one).
- Insert a couple needle probes in a couple brats and place them in the bottom of a pot that can fit on your smoker/grill. Cover them with onions, beer, add butter. Put lid on. Set the high-temp alarm on your Smoke X4 to 165°F (74°C)
- Cook in the smoker until brats reach 165°F on Smoke X. Verify the internal temp with your Thermapen ONE.
- Remove brats from beer and sear until nicely browned over direct heat.
- Serve in buns with desired toppings!
- You can insert the needle probes into more brats and drop them into the hot beer bath to keep the party going! Just keep an eye on the temps to keep things moving as quickly as possible.
Sound yummy, I’ll give em a try.
Just a few comments from a Wisconsin native.
1. Many people in Wisconsin use raw brats. Our local stores and meat markets sell a large variety. Our local grocery stores often make their own raw brats.
2. The flavor starts with a quality brat. The best brats come from a meat shop and you can really tell the difference.
3. There are numerous recipes for brats. Thanks for another one. But it is all about the fun with family and friends eating yummy food.
Thanks
Howard