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I remember reading about the 2010 Texas State Fair "Most Creative" deep-fried food winner, who made fried beer. The news stories I've read were all published around that time (August 2010), where Mark Zable (the fried beer inventor) said he had a super-secret patent-pending process for being able to fry beer.

I don't want to do any of my own experimenting to figure out the process - apparently Zable's first attempts resulted in exploding beer and oil - but I haven't seen any follow-up articles that describe his process. I can imagine that the two major problems would be a) keeping the beer actually inside an uncooked dough pocket and b) preventing the beer-filled dough from exploding in the fryer.

Has Zable's patent been approved and his process published? If so, where can I find it? Has anyone here successfully deep-fried beer and have a technique to share?

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Indeed, Mr. Zable actually applied for a patent -- US application no. 0014320, filed Sept 13, 2010. (Of course, just because he applied doesn't mean the US Patent Office will issue a patent on it.)

His process is, in essence: (1) gelling a liquid beverage; and (2) wraping an aliquot of the gel in a raw "farinaceous dough", selected from the group of pretzel, pizza, bread, and pasta doughs.

The application says he used gelatin as his gelling agent, but the patent (if it issues) would not be limited to gelatin. Once wrapped, the raw snack could be fried immediately or frozen for later use.

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    Hmmm... gelatin means the beer liquidifies as it heats. I would be interested in using carrageenan or something similar, which would keep the gel stable under heat. (Khymos reports that Achatz makes (made?) a carrageenan-based beer gel.)
    – Erik P.
    Jan 4, 2012 at 21:53
  • @ErikP. - great idea. It may be worth opening a couple beers and making a small batch with each of a few different gelling agents to see how they turn out! Jan 4, 2012 at 22:02
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    Hmm...sounds similar to the way soup dumplings are made. Interesting...
    – Laura
    Jan 4, 2012 at 22:03
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    @ErikP.: Carrageenan isn't that much more heat-stable than gelatin is. If you're really worried about that, you'd probably want to be looking more toward gellan gum or agar-agar, or even methylcellulose if it's going to be kept hot.
    – Aaronut
    Jan 4, 2012 at 22:43

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