Why You Should Start Adding Beer To Your Pancake Mixes

It's often said that breakfast is the most important meal of the day and pancakes are arguably one of the most iconic breakfast staples to grace the American table. Few things are as instantly comforting as the sight of a towering stack of fluffy golden-brown pancakes with melted butter and luscious maple syrup seductively dripping down its rounded edges. 

Achieving that milestone is often easier said than done, and everyone has their favorite secret ingredient to add to pancakes that they swear by. Popular add-ins include fresh fruit such as blueberries or bananas or using special ingredients such as buttermilk, non-dairy milk, cottage or ricotta cheese, or even mayonnaise in the batter (via Taste of Home). All of these undoubtedly have their own benefits. However, if you really want to take your recipe to the next level, you'll want to start adding beer to your batter for the fluffiest morning stack.

While the idea of adding beer to food may not be a novel concept, according to Thrillist, it is cookbook author and food blogger Josh Scherer who is commonly credited with being one of the first to add this magic elixir to the morning menu. "I saw someone on the Food Network put seltzer into pancake batter once, and I just thought that Natty Light was so close to seltzer that this could work," Scherer explained.

There are more than a few good reasons why adding beer to pancake batter makes sense, and the science behind it is simple. All great pancake recipes need an ingredient to make them fluffy (via Science Made Fun). This is often a leavening agent such as baking powder that produces carbon dioxide. So, in the case of adding beer to your batter, you're bringing in yet another leavening agent. The wonderful thing about beer is that it brings in both flavor and fluffiness to the mixture. 

The best part is you don't have to go out of your way and get some specialty beer or stout, as any beer will do, according to Thrillist. You can cater to your own personal tastes when it comes to light beer, dark beer, craft beer, or whatever is leftover in the refrigerator.