ENTER THE “BEERGAL,” A BEER LOVER’S BAGEL
Award-winning Deep Fried Beers’ latest creation isn’t a beer. It’s a bagel. And not just because there’s a pour of beer in the mix.
Johnny Osborne uses the ‘brewer’s last runnings’— the last few gallons of wort—to make his own barley malt syrup. The result? Large, fluffy bagels with a touch of sweetness. We chatted with Johnny + learned there may also be coffee coming soon. - SDP
Night School, home of Deep Fried Beers LLC| 21 2nd Street, Athens | nightschool4real.com | IG: @nightschoolforreal IG: @deepfriedbeers
Chatting to head brewer Johnny Osborne, founder of Night School, a pizza parlor, cocktail bar and home of Deep Fried Beers in the former Crossroads Brewing space on 2nd Street in Athens, N.Y., it’s clear his mind is permanently in create mode dreaming up the next craft beer or offbeat toppings of their famously huge pizza pies. (Johnny used to work at Paulie Gee’s in Brooklyn.) When The Dishing x Night School collaborated on a beer giveaway for New York’s April 11 Craft Beer Day, I should have been less surprised to learn he’d expanded his kitchen experiments from pizza dough to bagels. Currently available fresh-made on Saturdays at noon when Night School opens, you can treat yourself to Osborne’s crisp-shelled, fluffier-than-most, boiled bagels + their house-made cream cheese flavors, built on a base of Philadelphia cream cheese. I asked Johnny to give us the details:
Johnny, you’re calling these Deep Fried “beer-gals.” How’s the beer being used?
Yeah, I decided to make my own barley malt syrup. Taking what brewers call “last runnings” that would have gone into tanks and has just enough sugar content. Last runnings are the last few gallons of wort—(the term for sugar water made from mashing grain and hot water)—that would be collected into the kettle to be boiled, cooled, and fermented into beer. Instead of using the last bit of wort to collect more liquid to turn into beer, I put it in a bunch of cambros and took it to the kitchen and boiled the hell out of it to make the house barley malt syrup! It take about 10 gallons of that to make 2 quarts of barley malt syrup. It’s super rich. Kinda has that malt ball flavor... And then we use it in our dough for the bagels, boil them… it gives them a nice little sweetness.
You’re making your own cream cheese too?
Well, we use Philadelphia Cream Cheese as the base. We asked around and friends said you just can’t get better than Philadelphia (just like you can’t improve on Duke’s mayo) so it’s really about boosting it with our inclusions. We were told to add a little soda water and whip it to loosen it up… then we add inclusions to make flavors like French onion soup or lox.
Do you plan to expand the menu beyond your beer-gals?
We plan to ramp up to both Saturday and Sunday with beer-gals, and then sandwiches will be coming, definitely. And some more cream cheese flavors like a vodka sauce cream cheese. I’m also rehabbing an espresso machine so we can open earlier in the day with good espresso drinks. I’m working on all the parts, the elements… it’s going to be a process though.
