I keep my ear to the ground year-round to see what’s coming up at the big fairs, since that’s my gig. The Arkansas State Fair is of course my home beat, but this year I wanted to run down bigger fish and catch a preview of what might be coming here by heading to the Texas State Fair. And the big buzz this year has been over Fried Beer.
Mind you, there’s actually a contest. Each year vendors who plan to sell their wares at the Texas State Fair submit their menus, and the most exciting of the entries compete against each other. The Fair chose eight fried items to feature in their promotions, their on-site booklets and such. And Fried Beer took the title of Most Creative in the Big Tex Choice Awards.
I saw it talked about all over the media, even saw photos and a demonstration of how to make them. But no one talked about the most important thing to me -- how does it taste? And that, to me, was the most important thing. So photographer Grav Weldon and I packed up and headed to Big D on a quest.

We passed by all manners of shopping opportunities, an Ocean Spray cranberry bog booth, the Food and Fiber pavilion and dozens of food vendors with growing lines of folks ready to try things like Deep Fried Pizza, Fried Lemonade and


Now, I had hypothesized that this creation could be a source of a liability lawsuit if served incorrectly. After all, the process takes something that freezes near the point of water, namely beer. It’s put in grease which I am assuming is pretty darn far past the point of boiling. I worried that on opening the little pockets that they’d explode.

After a short interlude and break, we came back and forked over the 10 coupons (everything at the Texas State Fair is purchased with coupons, which will run you 50 cents apiece) and got our little tray.
“All the way?” Grav asked.
“Yes, and shut your mouth. It will explode in your mouth and it WILL cause a mess.”
I raised my eyebrows at him, and he mirrored the move. We moved a bit away to find good light to shoot the little pieces in. I made a point to see if they were hot. They were lukewarm.


“Was it that bad?” I asked.
“You need to try it. I don’t want to color your opinion.”
“Really? I mean, it can’t be that bad.”
“It’s… edible.” I doubted that from the look on his face, but he shook his head. “Remembrer, I’m not real big on beer.”
“Oh, well, all right.”
I picked one up and tried to grin at the camera Grav had on me. Then I got up the gumption and popped it in my mouth.
Grav started to laugh, and I opened my eyes. He’d caught the whole thing on camera.
“Pretty bad, huh?”
I winced and stuck my tongue out. “It tastes… familiar. But not in a good way.”
“Do you want anoth-”
“NO!” I told him, looking down at the remaining 3/5ths of our $5 investment. “But I want to see what it looks like on the inside.”
“The woman over there said it’d explode.”
I think part of the disgust was the blandness of the whole thing. It was just meh. Very meh.
“Can you try another, in case maybe we were wrong?” I asked Grav, and he shook his head.
“There’s no way I’m eating another one of those.”
“Then what?”

I just gawked for a moment, then joined in the act. “We’re trying to get a good opinion on this. We’re journalists.”
The guys, curious I guess, looked in the tray. Two of them took a ravioli each. The look on their faces pretty much told us we weren’t far off.

“Thanks, now I won’t have to buy it and find out,” said the other.
We had tossed the tray and wiped our hands and were heading in the direction of a Fried Cheese Curd vendor when it came to me, where I’d tasted that flavor before.
“It tasted like a beer belch,” I spit out, and Grav grabbed my shoulder and looked at me.
“You’re right. That’s it.”
“I mean, yeah, a bad beer belch, like with cheap beer.”
“Like the belch you have before you get sick.”
“I wouldn’t go that far!” I told him.
“I would! It was vile!” Grav said back.
The Fried Cheese Curds managed to get the taste out of our mouths. We spent the rest of the day sampling different fried foods all over that fair, but there was nothing else that just turned us off. I can’t quite get that flavor out of my head, either. And as I’m writing this piece today, I look back at my notes and see the notation:
“Fried Beer: God, Why?”
UPDATE: We thought that was bad. We hadn't tried the Fried Bubblegum yet from the 2011 Texas State Fair. See my reaction on Serious Eats... or check out my Texas State Fair Food Primer.
Sounds like a horrible thing to do to a perfectly lovely Shiner.
ReplyDeleteThe fried beer was one of the worst things I have ever tasted. It's nice that the lady warned you to put the whole thing in your mouth, though. No one warned me and I got a beer shower.
ReplyDeleteGross
ReplyDelete