Beer and Food Matching

So, what's the deal on Beer and Food? Many people are now telling us that beer compliments food in the same way as wine does. At Fourcorners we agree. But certain beers go much better with certain foods. So which beer styles best match particular food types? To help fans of our beers with this conundrum we have gone to the best person in the business. Garrett Oliver is the Brewmaster of The Brooklyn Brewery in New York. He is considered by many to be the foremost authority on beer and food matching. Having visited Ireland on a number of occasions in the past, Garrett has tailored a beer and food steer to suit the Irish palate exclusively for us. We hope you get inspired by it!

The Principles of Beer and Food Matching by Garret Oliver, Brewmaster, the Brooklyn Brewery, New York

When I first went to Ireland back in the mid 1980s, I was very much taken by the pubs, but less so by the beers served at them. I loved the stouts, but otherwise I mostly saw generic lager. I’ve been back to Ireland many times since then. I’ve eaten my way from Porterhouse in Dublin to Ballymaloe House in Cork and McDonagh’s in Galway. Ireland has always had great seafood, meat and produce, but people are much more interested in food than they once were. The same is true of beer, and if you still think of beer as a simple choice between a bland, fizzy yellow drink and a bracing black pint, beer has some wonderful surprises for you. As wonderful as wine is, beer actually has a far wider range of flavor. Beer can taste like caramel or smoke, oranges or chocolate, flowers or peppers, coffee or lemongrass, bananas or honey. It is far more versatile with food than any other beverage. It can be subtle enough to match the most delicate fish or muscular enough to stand up to pungent cheeses. Craft beer is the new affordable luxury, a drink that can make dinner more interesting every day. And many of the world’s best beers cost less than a latte at the coffee shop.

The first thing to know is that beer tends to be categorized in styles, very much like food. For example, we all know that ketchup is made from tomatoes, vinegar, sugar, and a few other ingredients. We know that it’s usually red, and that it tastes great on burgers and fries. If we take a beer style, say India Pale Ale (or IPA), we’ll know that it usually has a honey color, it’s got a snappy bitterness and a fruity flavor, it has a big citrus-like aroma, and it’s probably going to be great with spicy foods. Learn a few beer styles and you’ll quickly have the key to matching up beers with your favorite dishes.

As an island nation, Ireland has always had abundant fresh seafood. Some fish are light, flaky and delicate, and we won’t want to overwhelm them. Wheat beers make a nice match here because wheat gives beer a light texture and a refreshing little zing of acidity. The Belgian-style wheat beers are very pale, lightly fruity, very refreshing, and are usually subtly flavored with Curacao orange peel and a dash of coriander. So they’re going to be very nice with flounder, but they can also match salads brilliantly, especially if you crumble a little goat cheese on the salad. The German wheat beer style, known as weissbier, keeps the lightness of the wheat, and then its special yeast adds flavors of tropical fruit and smoke, great with barbecue and sandwiches. If you’re going for more robust fish such as salmon, you can reach for traditional pilsner, which is prized for its crisp bitterness , bready palate and appetizing floral aroma. This is not watery mass-market “lager”– craft-brewed pilsners are anything but bland. Like tannin or acidity in wine, bitterness gives this beer the ability to cut through oils and refresh the palate. Real pilsner is terrific with oysters, crab, and Dublin Bay prawns.

When we cook meat, we have a whole different set of flavors to play with. Let’s face it – we don’t like our meats boiled – we want them grilled, roasted, braised or fried. Even if we make a stew, we’re going to brown the meat first. All these cooking techniques develop caramelized flavors, which are important for many dishes. Anything that’s grilled, fried or roasted is focused on that flavor – it gives the dish depth and subtle sweetness. The matching beer uses caramelized malts to give caramel flavors that link up with the caramelized flavor in food. So here we look for amber lagers, amber ales and pale ales, which can harmonize nicely with the char on steaks, burgers or barbecued ribs. These beers have just enough bitterness to cut through sauces, and some sweetness to work with the meat, making them a perfect match. The same goes for dishes like fried chicken or pork chops, but these beers are versatile enough to be great with pizza, sandwiches, roast beef and a whole host of other dishes.

If you want to take the harmonies even further, you can reach for brown ales and abbey ales. These beers add roasted malts to the mix, bringing some light chocolate and coffee flavors in with the caramel. It’s not hard to see why this is going to be terrific with a lot of stuff coming off your grill, even grilled veggies. Ireland has some of the best lamb on the planet, renowned the world over. Belgian-style abbey ales are strong, fruity and complex, with dark colors derived from caramelized sugars. There are few things better with roasted lamb or lamb chops, and caramelized flavors always pair up well with good floury potatoes in all their forms.

Over 100 years ago, the British developed a robustly bitter pale alethat could make it all the way from England to India, and the India Pale Ale (IPA) style was born. These days, the most prodigious brewers of IPA are American craft brewers. These beers are great with Indian food, but also with Thai cuisine, Szechuan Chinese cooking, spicy Mexican dishes and Tex-Mex food. The hop is a very aromatic flower, and IPAs use plenty of them. The beers have aromas of oranges, limes, grapefruit, pine needles, and lemongrass –And these beers can handle much more spicy heat than any wine can, so there’s no need to hold back on those chilies and hot sauces.

If you thought beer would abandon you when it came time for dessert, we have a few new ideas for you. When brewers roast malts like coffee beans, the resulting beers take on big flavors of coffee and dark chocolate and we have stout. Classical Irish stout is wonderful, but it’s a “session pint”, not a dessert drink. However, stout has many variants, and some are great after dinner. The imperial stout beer style was originally brewed for Catherine the Great, but these days we get to drink it too. This type of beer is wonderful with dessert. Think “iced latte” and you’ll get the idea. The chocolate flavors in the beer match up nicely with chocolate flavors in desserts, but you can also make fun contrasts by pairing them with pies, fruit tarts, and even ice cream. Some American restaurants even make delicious ice cream floats with imperial stouts!

It may surprise to hear that beer can be better with cheese than wine is. Ireland is a great cheese-producing nation and great beer is the natural partner. Many of the Trappist ales made by Belgian monks are great with washed-rind cheeses such as Ardrahan. Cashel Blue is great with strong stouts and farmhouse cheddars pair beautifully with pale ales.

Well, you can see that we’ve barely scratched the surface here, and there are already plenty of great pairings to put together. Our food lives are like symphonies, and craft beers can bring you a whole new set of instruments to play.

It sounds like a grandiose thing to say, but I genuinely believe that beer and food pairings will improve your life. Many of the best moments in our lives are spent around a table with family and friends. A better dinner, every day, is a small moment, but small moments matter. Eating should be fun, and craft beer can bring variety and flavor to the dinner table all week long.

About the Author.
Garrett Oliver is the Brewmaster for the Brooklyn Brewery in New York. He is considered one of the best and most innovative Brewmasters in the world. Garret is also an expert on food. Through his knowledge of food and beer has has written extensively on both subjects and is now considered by many to be the foremost authority in matching food and beer. His book, "The Brewmasters Table" is regarded as one of the finest pieces of literature on the subject.

“The Brewmaster’s Table by Garrett Oliver is an excellent treatise on how to combine the right beer with the appropriate dish. It should be in the library of anyone who is serious about pairing beer and food.” – CraftBeer.com

“The best and most important book ever written on the subject of pairing food and beer.” – Bob Townsend, Atlanta Journal-Constitution