Food and Handmade Beer Pairings Dinner
by Jim Vondracek on 04/14/13
Beer, because of its endless variations and styles, pairs well with a wide-range of foods. While wine is usually the first option that occurs to us when considering food pairings, beer is more versatile and provides greater distinctiveness and choice. There are some foods (chocolate, spicy Thai) that just will not match well with wine. Not true for beer - you can always find a beer style that works.
This past weekend, Nancy and I hosted four couples for a dinner with five courses, each paired with a handmade beer from one of us. Our first course, as people gathered, included smoked salmon and proscuitto ham with crackers and pico de gallo with locally made tortilla chips. We paired this with Bill Goetz' Pilsner. The snappiness of the noble hops cut through the smoke, fat and salt of the salmon and proscuitto. The easy drinkability and maltiness complimented the spiciness of the pico de gallo. The photo below is from Bill's Facebook brewing page
The second course was a salad with romaine lettuce, tomatoes, yellow grape tomatoes, oranges, and cucumber, with a lemon & basil vinagrette. We served my Cherub's Nectar Belgian Golden Strong Ale with this course - this is a very dry, easy to drink beer, made with Pilsner malt, with some Belgian-y fruitiness and esters and a high abv (9.5%). This beer stood up to the citrus flavor of the orange in the salade and the bitterness of the lemon dressing. This is a good example of where it would be difficult to pair a wine that would work with the citrus and lemon acidity, but the beer cut through it.
For our third course, Mark Westmeyer brought his Imperial India Pale Ale, a big, malty, bitter beer with tons of hop aroma and flavor. The hops were Mosaic, Summit and Citra, if I remember correctly. This beer can stand up to hearty fare, so we paired it with: ribeyes steaks grilled with olive oil, sea salt, garlic and black pepper; a potato and leek gratin; and roasted brussel sprouts with smoked pork and onions. The fullness of the beer complimented the heaviness of the food, but the hops help cut through the fattiness of the pork, cheese, and beef.
Next was a cheese course, paired with Terry Frey's farmhouse beer, a Saison with brettanomyces, a wild yeast found on fruit skin which adds a 'funk' to beers. The funkiness of the beer complimented the funkiness of the cheese, which included a Spanish cheese made with three milks (similar to Manchego), a blue stilton, a white stilton with candied ginger, a Wisconsin sharp cheddar, and a brie. If you'd like to read more about beers with brettanomyces, here's a great article in the NY Times
We ended with a dessert of brownies paired with Jim Todd's Old Ale aged in a wooden barrel. This is a big, malty beer, round and luscious, with some vanilla and oak from the wood. I believe he blended the beer he brought; in other words, he mixed different versions of the beer when it was bottled. This was a group brew, I think, with many people brewing the base batch and then combining them together in a large wooden barrel. It was a wonderful beer with which to finish a meal and the fullness and roundness complimented the dense chocolate in the brownie very nicely.
If you are interested in reading more about the many styles of beer and how they pair with food, take a look at The Brewmaster's Table by Garret Oliver, brewmaster at Brooklyn Brewery.