BeerCraft
5704 Commerce Blvd
Rohnert Park, CA 94928
(707) 206-9440
www.beercraft.com
Conveniently located near The Brick Hutt Lego shop, and seen easily from the freeway. The bottle/can selection is outstanding, and the taproom area is in the back of the space with an excellent draft list (which can also be found on their website).
I was excited to see these posted by a Drake’s employee online, and then even more excited when I went to Safeway and saw them for $5 for a pack of 5.
I’ve never prepared brats myself, but the first time I seen my brother-in-law prepare “beer” brats, he took some Buds and poured them over a casserole dish filled with Johnsonville brats from Costco. He let ’em sit for about an hour and then grilled them. In preparing these Drake’s Brats (made by Smithfield BTW), I skimmed over a couple of the top searched recipes online and proceeded with my version of what I remembered.
I first cracked open the bomber and poured enough beer over the brats in a pot to have them fully submerged. The sliced onions kinda helped with that. I had a little more than a pint glass left, so I poured that remainder into the glass and started drinking on an empty stomach.
I turned the heat to the highest and waited for that sucker to come to a boil, then when it did, lowered it to allow it to continue to boil without foaming over. I then went and started the charcoals and let that burn to hopefully a normal fire by my planned 30 minute boil. The house started to smell of beer so I cracked windows, away from the grill of course and ran the vent fan on full blast.
I was going all out for these brats, so I totally went and got King’s Hawaiian Roll Hot Dog Buns for them. I toasted these with butter on a frying pan. The grill was ready at my planned 30 minute boil so I took the brats and placed them on the grill, and kept rotating them for about 10 minutes to get an even burn on all sides. The beer and onions left on the stovetop at a simmer, reducing away.
The brats were ready, placed on the bun, and the reduced beer & onions mix sauce was added on top. It was bitter AF. But I liked it.
Louie Baton 