Beer Jelly - The Session #30

This month the session hosted over at Beer47 is on the subject of beer deserts. I decided to take it literally and make a desert from beer trying out a recipe I'd been wanting to make for a while. It's from Appetite for Ale by Will Beckett and Fiona Beckett. I love this book, it's like a manual on how to match food and beer with recipes as a bonus.

I made the beer jelly recipe from the book. I used Liefmann's Kriek since the off license didn't have any Floris. I'll probably use Floris in a future version of this recipe since it's pretty sweet and comes in lots of different flavours which you can match to the fruit used in the jelly. Since I was using kriek beer I used preserved cherries from the local Polish shop, these are one of the few things you find preserved in jars from Poland that are actually nice. I also put in some fresh raspberries. Leaf gelatine and some sugar completed the ingredients.

I never knew making real jelly was so easy. I always used stuff from packets but now I've used the gelatine I'll be on the look out for new jelly recipes. A few hours in the fridge and it was all set.

We had some friends over for dinner and they tested out the jelly. We topped it with some vanilla ice cream. It was really good. I didn't sweeten up the beer too much so there was a lovely lambic tartness to the jelly which worked really well as jelly is usually too sticky sweet for me. I paired it with some Rodenbach Grand Cru. I love this beer but I do think it's one of those love or hate it affairs. It's fruity and sour and a bit complicated. I think it went well with the jelly for me. If you have a sweet tooth I think something a bit sweeter would go better with it. Or you could just drink the beer that the jelly was made from. In this case Liefmann's kriek was too expensive to buy a few of so I just used it to make the jelly.

I'll definitely make beer jelly again so thanks to the session for giving me the push to try it out.