Food Pairing is one of traditional beer’s greatest talents and one of the keys to its growing popularity. Once widely thought of as a great accompaniment to food, beer ceded the dinner table for decades as a pilsner-based monoculture took over in many countries. The renaissance of traditional brewing and the rise of craft brewing have recently brought much attention to beer’s versatility with food.
Beer’s greatest rival at the table is wine, and many people consider wine exclusively when deciding upon a partner for a dish. Wine is, of course, complex and wonderful, and rare is the craft brewer who does not enjoy it greatly. But any reticence to pair beer with food is unfortunate because beer indisputably has a far wider range of flavor to work with than wine does. The reasons for this are fairly simple—wine is made from a single ingredient, whereas a beer may easily contain a dozen. Beer can be black and taste like coffee or chocolate, it can be brightly acidic and tinged with complex earthiness, it can be bready and gently floral, it can be as smoky as bacon, it can be bracingly bitter and fruity, or it can be rich, sweet, and unctuous. Beer can tread so delicately as not to overwhelm the very lightest fish, or it can bring enough to the palate to match the boldest cheese. Beer can taste like almost anything, including wine. Brewing is much more like cooking than it is like winemaking, and this fact provides the basis for food matching.
An entire book could easily be written about beer and food pairing and many already have been. Here we are only able to provide some principles and guidance in the right direction. All beverage and food matching is—or at least should be—more of an art form than a set of rules. Of course we can drink any beer with any food, and relatively few pairings will turn out be truly unpleasant. However, it is possible to create genuinely transcendent combinations. The flavor experience we are seeking to create is more than the sum of its parts, just as voices in harmony can become exponentially more affecting than they would be alone.
As with any sort of beverage pairing, first we must consider the impact or intensity of the prospective partners. We do not want a powerfully flavored beer to overwhelm a delicate dish, nor do we want a fine-boned beer to vanish from the palate when faced with boldly flavored food. The goal, therefore, is balance. The intensity of the beer will be based on a number of factors that the taster will experience in combination, including sweetness, maltiness (bread-like quality, derived from malted grains), bitterness, roast character, alcoholic strength, carbonation level, and, occasionally, acidity. Although this sounds like a lot of information to process, we process such balances all the time; with a little thought, understanding the intensity of beer comes as naturally as turning the stereo volume to the right level of sound for a dinner party. When it is too loud, you will know it.
Venison dish paired with Ayinger’s Winterbock. brauerei aying franz inselkammer
In most styles of beer, carbonation gives flavors a refreshing lift. Levels of carbonation vary widely among beer styles, from the light prickle of cask-conditioned ales to the assertive effervescence of saisons. Carbonation provides beer with a physical sensation on the palate but also sharpens bitterness and acidity and cleanses the palate. Carbonation provides beer with cutting power against fats and other mouth-coating food elements. It is restorative on the palate and can make even very heavy dishes such as cassoulet seem far lighter than they might otherwise. Highly carbonated wheat beers, particularly Bavarian weissbier and Belgian witbier, are fruity, lightly bittered, and excellent with egg dishes at brunch. They are also very good with oily fish, such as salmon, sardines, and mackerel.
The range of flavors in traditional and craft-brewed beers gives a large palette of flavors and aromas for pairings based on harmony. Among the most powerful of these is the flavor of caramel, or, more correctly, caramelization. In most beers having colors ranging from amber to copper to deep brown, this color is the result of the use of caramelized malts. Sometimes, as in some Belgian styles, the color will come from caramelized sugar added in the kettle. Caramel flavors are often present in the aroma, often paired with some residual sweetness on the palate. Caramelization is, of course, among the most important flavors in food. When we fry, roast, grill, or sear food, we develop caramel flavors. This can be the basis for harmony and the reason why a brown ale works so nicely with a hamburger, pork roast, or grilled steak. Such pairings may present themselves as obvious, whereas others may require more thought. For example, we may think of a seared diver scallop in a brown butter sauce as a light seafood dish, but in fact much of the flavor of the dish is derived from the caramelization of the surface of the scallop and the butter sauce. A soft brown ale, a Bavarian dunkel, or a Belgian dubbel, each possessing plenty of caramel character, may work better than a paler beer. Other examples include the classic preparation of monkfish with lardons or crispy pancetta and pasta carbonara, prepared with a sauce based on egg yolks and pancetta. Beers with caramelized flavors also provide very good matches for dishes featuring mushrooms and for roasted chicken and game birds.
Many hop varieties, especially American varieties, bring citrus-like aromatics to beers. Dry hopped pale ales and India pale ales (IPAs) often taste of lemons, limes, and oranges. These flavors can provide harmonies with dishes that contain similar elements, whether it is a pork dish simmered with sour orange and achiote or a simple chicken dish in a lemon-based sauce. Many Thai dishes contain citrus juice, and this helps them pair well with beers that show these flavors.
Other beers, such as Belgian tripels and French bières de garde, feature herbal and floral flavors. Dishes strongly flavored with thyme, rosemary, oregano, tarragon, and other herbs tend to work well with them.
Roasted malts, used assertively in porters and stouts and a bit less so in dunkels and brown ales, will bring flavors of coffee and chocolate. These beers can pair very well with grilled meats or vegetables or any dish that develops a slight char in the cooking process. Such beers are sometimes aged in oak barrels, giving them vanilla-like aromatics and a particular affinity with braised beef dishes such as short ribs.
Malt itself, even when pale, has a bready, nutty flavor and will form the basis for any residual sweetness a beer may possess. Although beer is rarely genuinely sweet, many beers have enough malt sweetness to balance the heat of chili peppers or match dishes containing fruit or other sweet elements. Malt sweetness also balances salt in a dish.
Beer almost always starts with two contrasts to food—carbonation and bitterness. These are the backbones of the beer’s flavor and provide its cutting power. They also provide intensity, and that is particularly true of bitterness. Hop bitterness cuts through fatty dishes and cleanses the palate. With very spicy food, bitterness can intensify flavors in a pleasant fashion without clashing. Spicy Thai, Szechuan Chinese, Mexican, and Indian dishes often work well with pale ales and IPAs.
Dessert, often thought of as the province of sweet wine, is actually usually better with beer. The maxim in wine—that the wine must be at least as sweet as the dessert—does not hold force with beer. In fact, it is the relief of sweetness from the palate that is the key to success. After a few forkfuls, the palate is overwhelmed by the sugar in most desserts. That is one reason why coffee often seems so pleasant with dessert; it is not nearly as sweet as the dessert. There are many pairings that can work, but bigger beers with some caramel or roasted character tend to do best. With a chocolate tart, for example, we can pair a coffeeish, chocolaty imperial stout. In this pairing, we have both contrast and harmony—the roasted malts match the chocolate, whereas the beer cleanses the palate of sweetness; the dessert can come back tasting fresh. This works in a different fashion with vanilla ice cream, where the pairing is all about pleasant contrasts.
Cheeses are among the greatest partners for beer, so much so that we cover them separately.
A final word about the order of service: it stands to reason that we serve light dishes before heavy dishes and therefore lighter beers before heavier beers. The previous beer has an effect upon the next one; a prejudice lingers and must be taken into account. A delicate beer that follows a blockbuster is not likely to show its best. It is important to note that sweeter beers will make succeeding beers taste drier, sometimes drier than we might wish.
This principle can be made to work for us when we are serving both beer and wine at dinner. A good example of this is a classic starter dish if a luxurious one—seared foie gras. At most restaurants, this will be served with a sweet wine, and the combination is undoubtedly pleasant. The pleasantries often come to an end, however, when a red wine is served with the next dish; the preceding sweet wine will cause the red wine to taste thin and harsh. By serving a relatively dry beer with the foie gras—say a Belgian dubbel that will harmonize very well—we can avoid such problems. The red wine can follow without incident. Thus, we can observe that the table is not a place for orthodoxy but for pleasure. A little bit of thought regarding the best beer partners for our food can transform ordinary meals into interesting ones on a day-to-day basis. It is a transformation we all can afford and surely deserve.