While it's never not a time for beer-brats, I'm putting fingers to keyboard in mid-September, perhaps the beginning of their prime time. Fall, football, and the imminent coming of Oktoberfest all come together to make beer brats the obvious choice for this weekend's menu. So let's look at beer brats, what they are, where they come from, and how to make them perfectly, looking at temperatures and maybe even dispelling a myth or two along the way. Heat up the grill, it's sausage time!

Wisconsin-style beer brats

When we talk about beer brats, we're really talking about Wisconsin-style beer brats. While there is debate on the issue, the style seems to have originated in the vicinity of Sheboygan. The standard, accepted version consists of a bratwurst sausage simmered in a bath of beer—usually a simple lager—sliced onions, and a little butter. The sausage is served in a crusty roll, often with some good spicy brown mustard, piled high with the onions from the bath.

As for the sausage, a standard Wisconsin-style brat like those found at most grocers is exactly the kind you want. They should be fully cooked, obviously, with a firm, snappy casing and nice, juicy inside.

A traditional German food?

Beer brats are a favorite for many people holding their own Oktoberfest celebration. After all, this is a traditional German food, right? Not so much. While the ingredients smack of German cuisine, the dish itself is pure Wisconsin. In fact, the word bratwurst, translated from the German, literally means "grill-sausage," as opposed to brühwurst, "simmer-sausage," to which this preparation is closer.

If you like going to a local watering hole and ordering a plate of these, enjoy them here, but don't expect to find them in a Biergarten in the old country!

How long to boil beer brats

While people will boil the brats for a long time, it isn't necessary to do so. Once the proteins cook, they don't admit any beer into them. So no more beer will get in there. And the longer you boil them, the less snappy your casing will be—it will start to soften and almost dissolve. So cooking them just to the point where they are safe to eat and fully cooked gets you brats that are ready sooner with no degradation in quality. Cook to temp, not to time.

We had our resident Wisconsonian ThermoWorker taste our finished product, and he gave it his hearty seal of approval, even though the brats weren't stewed as long as cooking to a certain time would dictate.

Bratwurst doneness temps

Brats are ground meat, so we have to cook them to ground-meat temperatures. We like to get sausage up to 165°F (74°C) to make sure it is safe to eat. We used our Smoke X4 with optional waterproof needle probes to track the temps during the cook, setting our high-temp alarm for 165°F.

Why we use a needle probe

Why use the waterproof needle probe? First, because it's waterproof, obviously. Simmering sausages in a vat of beer means waterproofness matters.

Second, we love the pin-prick hole left in the sausage. And Smoke X4 is exceptionally easy to set up. We took the receiver inside with us while the bratwursts bathed and went back out to grill them when they were cooked through.

Serving beer brats

Remove the brats from the bath and place them over direct heat on your grill and cook just until browned. Then get them ready to eat.

Bet some good brat buns for this. The best ones will have a bit of a crisp to the exterior and will have some structure. Use a nice slather of spicy brown mustard and pile those onions up on top, and you're good to go. Well, unless you want some warm sauerkraut on there, too. The more-structured bun will take up all the juice that comes along with your beer-stewed onions and kraut.

You can, of course, caramelize some onions to go on as well. Onions-two-ways is delicious, but not necessary or even very traditional. But it IS very delicious.

Do I need a smoker or grill to make beer and brats?

We prepped our brats on a grill—a common practice among tailgaters. But you can just as easily make them on the stove at home. Put the beer and onions in a pot, nestle the brats in, and cook them just like above. But then, rather than grilling them off once they cook, you can sauté them in a hot pan with a little butter until browned.

Caveat: on the beery onions

Our short-simmer method did turn up one slight problem, if you want to call it that. Our onions didn't have time to cook down quite as far as we might like them to go. Don't get us wrong, they were still limp, beer-infused, and delicious. But they could, conceivably, be limper. To help in this, use a mandoline to slice your onions ultra-thin, or give them a few minutes saute before they go in the beer. Or you could start them in the beer before you add the brats. In fact, that's what we'd probably do next time.

But even if you don't, by the time you put a second batch of brats through the bath, your onions should be well softened.