Homemade Beer Brittle

Beer brittle?? Do I hear you scratching your head over there?! :) I decided to try my hand at making brittle the other day...and not just any ordinary brittle, but beer brittle! I honestly don't remember what inspired me. Sometimes an idea just pops into your head and you go with it!

I have to say that this recipe was not necessarily difficult. It was really just a tad time consuming. It definitely took longer than I anticipated, but it was still fun. Check out the recipe I used here.

As you can see, there's just a teeny bit of sugar in this recipe. ;-) The most time consuming part was bringing the mixture to the temperature of 300 degrees fahrenheit. I thought it would never reach 300!! But I stuck with it, as did my candy thermometer. :) And speaking of "stuck with it," this is a sticky mixture! Once the mixture is ready, you have to pour it quickly into the prepared pan. It also sticks to your teeth a bit when you eat it, but don't worry, it's worth dealing with the sticky-ness, thanks to how yummy it is! And it actually doesn't stick to your teeth for long either, I promise.

Pictures!!

The recipe calls for peanuts, but I used sliced almonds because that's what I had. And I toasted them! I did it on the stove. Super easy! The toasting really brings out the flavor of the nut. Have you ever toasted or roasted nuts before? See how to do it here! You can toast them on the stove or in the oven.

Check out that roasty toasty brown color. ;-)

SUGAR!

I chose to use good ol' Sam Adams Cream Stout.

The recipe didn't call for the whole bottle, so I did my part to finish it....

Let the liquids cook!

So this is when I started to worry about whether I was doing this correctly. First of all, I kept having to adjust the gas on the stove. It kept wanting to boil over! So if you try this recipe, be sure to closely monitor it on the stove.

Woah, what's that?! After the mixture finally reached 300 degrees after taking a lot longer than I anticipated, it "blew up"! It was ready to go right over the edge of the pan...

So I quickly brought it over to the sink. Doesn't that look kinda cool though? :)

There, it calmed down. As soon as it did I poured the mixture into two prepared pans lined with foil and sprayed with cooking spray.

Look at that leftover sticky goodness!

Don't worry; as messy as this looks, it actually cleans up very easily. I just let the pan sit full of hot water for several minutes, and voila, the sticky-ness vanished!

The brittle hardened very quickly. I took this piece off the pan to give it a taste. Yum!!

This recipe made a LOT of brittle!!!

All in all, I was happy I tried making this unique treat. It's not in my typical repertoire, so it was fun!

The taste was a bit nutty, caramel-y, and even a bit spicy! As you can see, the recipe calls for chili powder. I actually had just run out of chili powder before making this brittle, so I added a touch of cayenne pepper instead. And I really think you could taste it! It added a fun kick to it. ;-)

Talk to you again soon, hopefully!