United Nations of Beer

Beer and Food

by Lucia Novara
(Beer Delegate, CO, USA)

Beer and Food at the GABF 2007

Pairing beer with food is not a revolutionary concept, but since the explosion of the craft beer industry, it's gotten a whole lot more high-end.

Beer and food pairing used to consist of washing down hot wings with Bud Light, but as craft brew flavors have gotten more complex and the ingredients more adventurous, some truly gourmet combinations have been put side by side in our mouths and told to mate.

As part of the Great American Beer Festival in 2007, the Brewers Association hosted a media lunch that included some serious beer and food pairings. Once I was told there was going to be beer, food, and beer served together, and it was free, I was there.

All the beers were from Colorado, but I imagine beers from other states taste OK with food too. Read on to discover what can happen when lemon, hops and basil get all up in your mouth together and decide to break down the funk.

Appetizer: salad of celery hearts, pancetta, tart apples, and blue cheese

Beer: New Belgium Brewery, Mothership Wit, Fort Collins.

The beer itself is clean and light with a lot of carbonation. Paired with the salad, it creates a bright combination with the blue cheese bringing out the orange peel flavor in the beer.

Like any good product of Fort Collins, it's made with organic wheat malt. This was my favorite beer and food pairing and it made me long for summer.

Entree: Cedar planked beef brisket with chocolate ancho rub, risotto and steamed fresh vegetables

Beer: Mountain Sun, Old School Dry Irish stout, Boulder

The Irish Stout had a little more bite and less chocolate/malt flavor than I usually expect from a stout. That said, the slight chocolate flavor echoed the chocolate ancho rub on the meat for a nice complement.

I'm not a carnivore by nature and typically don't enjoy red meat, but this steak made me want to worship cows. Worship and eat them all day. It was lean, but the little bit of fat on it combined with the light carbonation in the beer for the beer and food pairing made for a great smooth mouthfeel.

Palate cleanser: Lemon Thai Basil Sorbet

Beer: Oscar Blues Brewery, Dales Pale Ale, Lyons

Beautiful beer, beautiful sorbet, but man were they ugly together. Kind of like orange juice and toothpaste. Or licorice and hot sauce.

The lemon and basil combination was really tasty, but it stretched the freaky-deakyniss of my palate and I didn't have room to put hops in there too.

The Dales Pale was chock full of hops and tasty in its own right, but this marriage of beer and food was as ill-advised as Julia Roberts & Lyle Lovett's unholy union.

Dessert: Fudge Stout Brownies

Beer: Great Divide, Oak Aged Yeti, Denver.

This was my second favorite beer and food pairing to the appetizer. The Yeti was a little musky, sour and beachy on its own, but with the uber-sweetness of the hazelnut brownie it was the perfect sweet and bitter combo. It was like drinking coffee with dessert, but coffee with delicious, delicious booze in it.


The next portion of the luncheon was a surprise seminar with Sam Calagione, brewmaster of Dogfish Head Craft Brewery and Marnie Old, Assistant Dean of Wine Studies at Manhattan's French Culinary Institute.

They ran us through the age-old beer vs. wine question with typical gender roles in place. While they had a good repartee and some interesting points, the whole thing smacked of the oversimplified "Penises are From Mars and like Beer, Vaginas are from Venus and like Wine" attitude.

As an alcohol Democrat, I don't appreciate having my drinks ordered in accordance with my genitals.

Sam and Marnie did have some interesting things to say though. Using an excellent beer, wine, pretzel and dippables taste test, they pointed out which drinks work best with which flavors. Beer is almost always better to drink with hot or spicy foods, since the higher alcohol content of wine makes your mouth burn more.

While wine and cheese are forever married in a delicious dance of yummitude*, some saltier cheeses go better with beer. And I challenge any wine snob out there to find a bottle that goes well with cabbage! But the real lesson I learned by this demonstration was that all life lessons should be taught with booze, pretzels and a variety of dippables (with the possible exception of abstinence).

All in all, good looking out Brewer's Association! If your goal was to make me praise you in print, you succeeded. Another successful marketing maneuver: handing out free copies of Lucy Saunders' The Best of American Beer & Food-Pairing and Cooking with Craft Beer.

My journalistic integrity does not allow me to promote Lucy Saunders' The Best of American Beer & Food-Pairing and Cooking with Craft Beer in my article just because I got a free copy of Lucy Saunders' The Best of American Beer & Food-Pairing and Cooking with Craft Beer.

That said, however, you haven't even dreamed of half of the beer recipes that are in Lucy Saunders' The Best of American Beer & Food-Pairing and Cooking with Craft Beer and if you don't own a copy of Lucy Saunders' The Best of American Beer & Food-Pairing and Cooking with Craft Beer, then you should go out and buy a copy of Lucy Saunders' The Best of American Beer & Food-Pairing and Cooking with Craft Beer.

Selling out never tasted so good.

*Random sidenote: I once had a wine and cheese party in my sophomore year of college. Apparently I was ahead of my time, because my cousin Drew thought it was appropriate to show up with a package of Kraft Singles and seven bottles of Boones Farm.

At the end of the night my Gruyere platter was untouched, but there were Kraft singles on the ceiling, in the VCR, and molded into a cheese helmet on a bald guy's head. Apparently cousin Drew knew his audience better than I.