Pale Ale BBQ Sauce

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Back in March the wife and I went on a cruise that stopped in Old San Juan, Puerto Rico. While there we ate at Old Harbor Brewing. The meal my wife ordered was Pale Ale BBQ’d wings. Ever since my wife has been bugging me about coming up with a recipe for it. Anyone have any ideas or know of good starting point? I’ve seen a couple online, but would rather have input from someone with proven sauces.....Shawn

Depends on what the sauce tasted like ... was it sweet ? hot ? smokey ? etc ...

Looking at their menu and taking a wild guess, it looks like it’s probably a typical tomato-based BBQ sauce - probably with some heat added? If so, what about finding a bbq sauce recipe made with beer and modifying it with a pale ale and some spices?

Hope you had better service than we did. Decent beer though.

We had great service, then again it was early on a weekday. My wife considered it the highlight of the cruise.

Originally posted by SHIG
We had great service, then again it was early on a weekday. My wife considered it the highlight of the cruise.

We really didn’t like Old San Juan....nothing but tourist shops for the most part and it was raining so without much to do we hit up a cab and went the the state museum which was excellent.

When we got back by the boat we had an hour and a half to kill so we went in there to eat and it was late on a weekday...around 2pm. Couldn’t get waited on hardly at all and our waitress knew almost nothing about the beer. The food was decent, but the sandwich was small and overpriced.

By contrast we LOVED the brewpub on St Jon V.I.

well, I found a recipe that sounds pretty solid. but I don’t know if it’s hot or not.

- 2C Ketchup
- 1C of hoppy beer (IPA’s are good); I used Surly Furious
- 1C Molasses
- 1/2 C Cider Vinegar
- 2T Stone Ground Mustard
- 2T Worcestershire Sauce
- 1T Garlic Powder
- 1/2t Salt

Mix all ingredients in a saucepan, and simmer over medium heat for 20 minutes.

First of all, pale ale is not the best choice, use tumbler brown ale or smuttynose porter. Secondly, ketchup has too much corn syrup and burns too easily. Try this:
1/2 bottle of tumbler or smuttynose porter
1 medium onion
4 garlic cloves
evoo for saute the veggies and spices and to fix texture
5 teaspoons ancho chili powder
1 teaspoon smoked paprika
1 teaspoon chipotle flakes
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoon fresh coarsly ground black pepper
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
2 small cans tomato paste
1/2 cup molasses
1/2 cup red wine vinegar
1/3 cup dijon mustard
1 teaspoon anchovy paste
2 teaspoons miso concentrate

Agree that Pale Ale may not be the best choice. You could go the Smokey route with a Smoked Porter or something to give it that flavor which a lot of people like. I make a decent amount of homemade sauces, but rarely use beer in it, only while making it if you know what I mean.



I disagree about not using ketchup, I find it to work well, but there are plenty that are great that don’t use it as well. I just don’t think one should say not to use it, that is all.

Thanks for the suggestions. I agree on the darker beers working better. I think my wife was infatuated with the idea that it was light and cooked into the skin, not all gooey. I’m going to dabble the next few weeks for sure. It’s wing time!

Originally posted by Tibeerious
evoo

I see someone is a big Rachel Ray fan. Can you cook your sauce in 30 minutes and with $40?