Toulouse: would you like to drink a cassoulet or bouillabaisse beer?
This weekend is the 4th edition of the Toulouse Beer Fest. On the program, more than thirty local brewers offer the public to taste their products. Some are unusual, such as cassoulet or bouillabaisse beers.
After the wizards’ beer composed of butter and brown sugar, which became famous with Harry Potter, here is the cassoulet beer. At the head of the Sabotage brewery near Cazeres, Justin Marquez likes to shake up the codes. In partnership with David Garrigues, from the Iron brewery in Montauban, he launched in 2018, during the local Octobière festival, this cassoulet beer.
“It was a long preparation,” he recalls. We made the cassoulet upstream and then used the flavors of flageolet beans, duck, sausage and sauce to create a drinkable beer with cassoulet flavors. A real culinary challenge. I had also used an extraction principle to recover the good aromas of the meat without the fat. Then it was the fermentation of the beer with various ingredients (barley malt, yeast, hops) to provide an aromatic palette in harmony with that of cassoulet ”.
This feat was a great success: “Restaurant owners and inhabitants of Castelnaudary have ordered me for their menu or their cellar. I marketed 500 liters in a few days and then everything calmed down ”. As for the taste, he admits: “It was special. The experience greatly intrigued the curious, followed by new taste sensations ”.
Decidedly focused on the region, Justin has also launched bouillabaisse beer with the Zoumaï brewery in Marseille: “I like to create beers with local flavors. Demonstrate that this drink can adapt to anything ”. He also made a sauerkraut beer with the Mx brewery near Agen. And another with grape mold with a Gaillac winemaker. A beer with wine now on the tables of a few restaurants, including Solides by Simon Carlier. Justin insists: “There is a real revival of interest in beer. Like the India Pale-Ale, 300 years old and forgotten. A bitter blonde who has not revealed all her secrets ”.