Tuesday, March 20, 2018
Whether its dark beers with game, golden ales in fish batter or a pale ale with a lemon torte we love the chemistry of matching beer with food.
Some might say that all you need are some peanuts and a pickled egg but for anyone with a yearning for some culinary magic here’s a quick bluffers guide for matching beer with food:
1. Match the weight of the beer to the primary ingredient in the food. So, match light coloured beers with fish and chicken and darker beers with red meats and stronger flavoured dishes. At the same time, higher strength beers (that will be naturally sweeter usually) can partner to richer foods – think Pearl Jet stout with rich fruit cake – whilst lower alcohol levels are great with salads and light bites.
2. Then complement your food by partnering it with similar flavour aromas. So a rich roasted malt in a stout makes a happy partner to charred barbecue and griddled meats. How about steak pie or a Sunday roast with your Pedigree?
3. Alternatively, look for a contrasting flavour, one which opposes the main taste in the dish to find a balance and a unique new experience. Consider a sweet wheat beer or our Old Empire IPA with a spicy chicken Jalfrezi where the contrast can impart some cooling and taming of the spice as a heat quencher.
4. Finally choose a beer with carbonation and bitterness that cuts through richer flavours and textures, such as a crisp craft keg lager with lashings of hop aroma and a dry bitterness which can cut through a creamy cheeses, or a bitter IPA that can cut through sweet sticky barbecue condiments in a sweet sticky rib dish. 61 Deep loves a bit of tonsil hockey with a Lemon Torte!
Good luck with your creativity: experiment with care – and possibly some goggles.
