Inducing Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder in a Cat While Making Tasty Beer Mustard

Making beer mustard is an enjoyable treat for the whole family - except your cat, whose dreams will be haunted until his death. Let’s begin.

The inspiration behind making beer-based mustard came from the convergence of three sources: Weyerbacher’s imperial stout Heresy, Inglehoffer stone ground mustard and my two friends who have been tirelessly working toward the goal of making their own craft beer. The humans are on the right.

The first step is to buy packages of brown and yellow mustard seeds on Amazon.com in bulk. Then buy a four-pack of a dark beer of your choosing. One of the beers is for the recipe, the remaining beers are to help forget your pain. The ingredients I used are below, lined up as if they’re about to play the Family Feud. Note how there are two bottles of red wine vinegar, because Little Italian Man buys things multiple times when he forgets he already has them.

The beer-mustard recipe I based this on was derived from Allrecipes: http://allrecipes.com/recipe/beer-mustard/?mxt=t06dda. Start by integrating the brown and yellow seeds, then pour in your dark beer. Mix them well then wait 24 hours.

Did you wait 24 hours? Don’t lie to me. Go back and wait. Much better. Now, mix the remaining ingredients in a food processor and pulse for 5 minutes.

If you’ve ever used a food processor, you’ll know that it makes a noise reminiscent of the human-killing robots in the 1995 Peter Weller movie Screamers.

Now imagine that noise lasting for five straight minutes. It is this noise which pierced my cat’s ears and damaged his frontal lobe. Here he is at minute three of the food processing. These days he’s prone to jolting awake in the middle of the night and shivering in the corner of the room.

He starts therapy this week. After pulsing, place the mustard in the fridge and leave it there for two weeks…I’m sorry, what? How long? Two weeks? Two deal-killing weeks? Is this a joke? I have to wait two weeks to eat this stuff? I’m making mustard, not buying a damned gun. Two weeks.

So two weeks have gone by. My guests departed 1 week, six days and 8 hours ago, after angrily consuming mustard-less hot dogs. But as you can see, the wait was well worth it, judging by the huge difference between the before (left) and after (right) pictures.

Apparently, waiting two weeks ages the mustard like a fine wine, which is a good thing. When ready, the mustard will be grainy, rich and delicious. Congratulations on making your own beer battered mustard. Add it to your favorite pretzels, hot dogs and brats, and enjoy.