Just to make clear what sort of masochist I am, there are three styles that I have an ironclad policy of ordering, no questions asked, whenever I see one on a tap list: saison, black IPA, and chile beer. I’m a supporter of the lost arts, you might say.
And that’s how I end up drinking a somtum ale in Bangkok: It’s on draft at the excellent United Peoples Brewery, and I ask whether the beer—being somtum-flavored—has chiles in it. “Yeah,” says the brewer, Supapong Preunglampoo, aka Toon. (All Thais go by a short nickname.) “Also dried shrimp, and salted crabs, and…”
It doesn’t matter what else Toon says. The policy is the policy: It has chiles, so I must have it.
Wait, Stop. Salted Crabs? What’s Somtum?
Somtum is a salad, technically, but that word doesn’t do it justice. If it’s a salad, it’s the most exciting, flavorful salad you’ve never had, unless you have.
The salad’s base is green papaya, crisp and slightly tart, julienned into a neat mess of shreds. (Some Asian supermarkets have green papaya, but if not, green mango or even green apple can work.) Add a few juicy grape tomatoes, crunchy green beans, roasted peanuts, fresh Thai chiles, fresh-squeezed lime (throw the peels in there, too, for smells), dabs of palm sugar, fish sauce—this is Thailand, there is fish sauce in everything—tiny dried shrimp, and maybe a few little salted crab guys, and there you have it. Then, all you need then is an icy-cold Singha to quench that sweet fiery pain, so you can keep eating.
In Thailand, of course, all that stuff is commonplace, and you can have it on the street for the equivalent of $2, maybe less. But we know how this goes in the States and other Western countries: If you find a great Thai restaurant in your city that sources the right ingredients and throws together an authentic somtum, it may cost you a small fortune.
Maybe that’s why you should brew it: For a fraction of the cost, you don’t need to eat somtum. You can drink it.
Photo: Papa Wor/Shutterstock.com
Brewing a Somtum Beer
Toon is head brewer at United Peoples and founder of the Sandport brand. (His Thasai West Coast–style IPA made my critic’s list last year, but only because it was delicious and I kept drinking it.) With some brewer friends in Bangkok, he’s got an occasional side project called Sour City.
So, one of the lessons that can be drawn from the Special Ingredient archives is this: If you can brew a nice, clean, Lacto-acidified base, then you can throw all kinds of crazy shit in there, and it’s probably going to be all right—and that’s the Sour City series, in a nutshell. A previous release—Soi Cowboy, named after a street infamous for its density of thirsty tourists and go-go girly bars—included Thai guava, sour plums, and edible glitter.
They named their somtum beer Hua Lamphong. Why? “The truth is,” Toon says, “back in the day, sex workers around Hua Lamphong used to disguise themselves as somtum vendors. It’s an old Thai inside joke: When someone said they were going to eat somtum at Hua Lamphong, it was usually a cheeky way of saying they were up to something—not just food.”
This is all new to me—I just love the dish—but hey, it’s always nice to learn some culture. Anyway, here’s how they pack all that flavor into the beer while still keeping it drinkable.
The first key is the Lacto-acidified base. Keep it simple, purge with CO2 to keep out oxygen, and control your pH—Toon aims for 4.5 pre-Lacto and halts acidification at 3.3 or 3.2. Note: There is no papaya in this beer. Sure, you could add it, but the truth is that if you get your base right—crisp and tart, which is the essence of green papaya—then the fruit would have nothing else to add.
The second key: control the capsaicin. “Not too spicy,” Toon says. Note that most Thais have a very different idea of what that means. This is a spicy beer—but you can drink it. In the past, Toon says, he’s added chiles to the boil—but he thinks it’s better to add the chopped Thai bird’s eyes to the secondary, where you’ll get a fresher flavor and where it’s easier to control the heat with quantity and contact time.
Then, there’s the fish sauce and other sea-critter elements. “For all the stinky stuff, we need to make sure that it’s not going to be too much,” Toons says. “Make sure that it’s not overpowering.”
In the current version, many of the most flavorful ingredients come together in a somtum “dressing” that goes in after fermentation. That means you can add it to taste—chiles, stinky stuff, and all—to make sure the beer stays in your own drinkability zone.
Bird’s Eye View
Guess what? The beer is great.
It helps that I love somtum—especially the classic somtum Thai that’s brighter and less fishy than some variations—because that’s the aroma that wafts from the glass, with nutty, briny hints alongside bright lime and fresh chile. On the tongue, a nicely balanced acidity—tart, not sour—evokes crisp, green papaya and fresh-squeezed lime, carrying a moderately fiery kick, while the umami is restrained but reminds you what this is supposed to be.
I also love spicy food, and I’ve got a pretty high heat tolerance—my son says it’s because I’m old, so my taste buds are dead—and I can enjoy a chile beer that kicks... up to a point.
But the mark of a great chile beer isn’t that you could drink it all night. Who does that? If you’d drink a second spicy beer, however, that already is exceptional. And with this one, I did.
