Wine has always gotten attention as the drink that pairs with food. But there's more variety in beer than there is in wine, which means there are far more flavour combinations available to you by matching up beer styles with various dishes.
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Brewers will sometimes let you know what foods go well with their various beers; there are beer and food pairing events where a brewer and a chef have worked together to create a scrumptious meal; and there are more recipes with beer in them than you can ever get to cooking.
I'm no chef, so I won't pretend to know all the ins-and-outs of flavour matching. But I'll share a few combinations my tastebuds never fail to thank me for...
Pizza
Many would say a pale lager is the drink to have with pizza; if they're a real beer nut, they might push for a crisp and hoppy Italian pils.
But my go-to is a witbier. There's something about the way the zestiness cuts through the grease that I find delightful.
Meanwhile, the light spice and creamy carbonation can make up for a bland pizza or be a fine accompaniment for a great one.
The exception is a pizza heavy with intense flavours. If you like to load up your pizza with double pepperoni or potent ingredients like olives or capers or anchovies or jalapenos or pesto, then slam that flavour bomb with a double IPA. I can't say you'll be ready to go for a run afterwards, but you'll have a bloody good time. Then you'll sleep like a bear in hibernation.
Fish and chips
When I was a kid, my family always spent our holidays at the beach. We'd sit down at a picnic table under the shade of Norfolk pines, looking over the golden sand and sparkling ocean, and eat fish and chips out of a paper parcel. To me, that's the taste of relaxation.
This is what I'm trying to recapture, so I want a piney IPA that's flavoursome enough to overpower the salt stinging my lips after I've been battered around by the waves.
But if you give me a Pacific ale with a hop profile that's as gentle as the sea breeze, I won't argue.
Another option is to get something lemony if that's what you like with your seafood, but this isn't always easy to find.
Some lagers have a lemony flavour, brewers will sometimes release a lemon sour or you could hunt down a pale ale featuring Sorachi Ace, Southern Cross or Lemondrop hops.
Spicy curry
I've heard people say a strong-flavoured IPA goes well with curry, but I disagree.
A good curry already has the perfect balance of spices and flavours. Why get in the way of that?
So I'll have a dry lager here to maximise the impact of the spices. It's perfect for scraping the tongue clean, leaving it ready for the next mouthful.
Note that this isn't going to help soothe your mouth if you're finding the curry a bit too hot; if anything, it'll make it worse!
Pie (savoury)
Sorry to be un-Australian for a moment, but I'm not talking about the individual meat pies that Aussies buy at a football game or a petrol station.
If you're at the footy, you drink whatever beer you can get; it's not the time for food pairing and sniffing the beer in your plastic cup.
And if you're grabbing a pie at a petrol station, it's probably not the time for a beer either.
But when you're eating a big, hearty pie with a rich filling - perhaps mince, steak and onion or a shepherd's pie - you want stout.
A roasty stout that sits somewhere between 4% and 6% ABV is perfect for enjoying in a room full of dark timber and chattering people, preferably during winter.
Take a bite of pie and a swig of stout and party like it's 1899. Bonus points if the pie itself was cooked with stout in the gravy.
Bread
I've already mentioned that Belgian saison goes well with bread at a picnic.
But if I'm specifically thinking about the flavour of bread, I'm thinking about a helles. The bready malt taste is incredibly more-ish, and there's just enough body that you can imagine taking a bite of it.
A big hunk of fresh bread and a stein of helles; I'm in heaven just thinking about it.
Or you can treat helles like it is bread, and match it with a platter of antipasto, cheese and meats or hummus and pickled vegetables ... with a bit of warm flatbread, just to be on the safe side. (Is it obvious how in love with bread I am?)
Chocolate brownie
Some would say to complement this with the chocolatey notes of a dark beer, but I reckon that just dulls the flavours of both beer and brownie, almost like they cancel each other out.
What a waste of a good brownie and a good beer!
No, you want to contrast here - a raspberry sour will bring a slap of tartness to the sweet brownie, and is light enough that it won't weigh you down when paired with the decadent chocolate.
You'll find the result is greater than the sum of its parts.
Of course, you could go for a different kind of sour - an orange sour would create a jaffa-like vibe, and cherry brings a wonderfully classy vibe to dark chocolate - but I'm a chocolate raspberry person.
Vanilla ice cream
Put a scoop into a glass of bitter chocolate stout. Thank me later.
- Mick Wust enjoys a brewski so much he's become a specialist beer writer. Mick contributes fun and informative articles for a range of brewing media. He's a freelance contributor to The Crafty Pint, an independent online magazine and resource for anyone interested in craft beer in Australia. He hates beer snobs. This is his first book.
- Edited extract from Beer Drinker's Toolkit, by Mick Wust. Gelding Street Press, $32.99. Available at all leading retailers and geldingstreetpress.com
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