10 different drinks to pair with smoked salmon

Smoked salmon is most commonly associated with champagne but in fact it goes with many other wines as well as with beer, whisky and vodka.

I tend to go for lighter, crisper whites and beers with lighter smokes and sherry and spirits with stronger ones.

Sancerre, Pouilly-Fumé and other Loire Sauvignons
The ultra-dry minerally Sauvignons of the Loire with their delicate gooseberry fruit are perfect for simply served smoked salmon. Other top new world Sauvignons will work too so long as they’re not too ‘herbaceous’ as the green bean/asparagussy notes of some Sauvignons are sometimes described.

Chablis
Especially young, unoaked Chablis which has the freshness and clean, crisp acidity to counteract the slight oiliness of smoked salmon. Richer Chardonnays go well with hot smoked salmon.

Dry Riesling
Dry being a relative description when it comes to Riesling. Young German Kabinett Rieslings with their vivid green apple flavours work especially well, but young Alsace and Australian Rieslings are also good. Avoid medium dry and sweeter Rieslings though.

Gewurztraminer
I’m not a big fan of Gewurz and smoked salmon myself but many people swear by it. Again, Alsace would be the obvious source.

Manzanilla and very dry fino sherry e.g. Tio Pepe
If you like dry sherry this is one of the best matches. The tangy salty taste of dry sherry is perfect with smoked fish. Serve it freshly opened and well chilled.

German or Czech Pilsner
Another excellent match, the freshness and slight bitterness of a pils is just what you need with smoked salmon. (Think smorgasbord . . . )

Weissbier/Witbier/Wheat beer
‘White’ beers go with most kinds of seafood, smoked fish not excepted. The slightly spicy coriander flavours are great with smoked salmon.

Malt whisky
Maybe not the ideal party tipple but an outstanding match for an impromptu smoked salmon snack. Choose a lighter, more fragrant malt with delicately smoked salmon (Springbank is my all-time favourite), a peatier ‘island’ malt if you’re dealing with a stronger smoke.

Aquavit
In particular the glorious Aalborg Jubilaeums Akvavit from Denmark, flavoured with dill and coriander, the best match bar none for gravadlax

Vodka
Good, well chilled Polish vodka works a treat.

You may also find this post 20 Christmas wine pairings to learn by heart useful.

Food pairings for wheat beer I: witbiers (bières blanches) and lighter wheat beers

Wheat beers are fabulously flexible when it comes to food matching - the beer world’s equivalent of a crisp white wine.

There are two main styles - the cloudy, citrussy, aromatic Belgian-style witbier (aka bière blanche) and the richer banana-and-clove flavours of German hefeweizen which you can read about here.

In between are a range of wheat beers from different sources which fall somewhere between the two but are basically suited, like witbier, to salads, seafood and dishes flavoured with citrus and herbs

Matches for Northern French and Belgian style witbiers:

Seafood such as crab, mussels, oysters and clams - witbier is great for a beery version of moules marinières

Simply prepared fish like fried or grilled sole or plaice

Fish cakes

Smoked salmon or trout

Dim sum and other light Chinese dishes such as stir fries

Sushi

Raw fish such as ceviche and tartares

Fried fish like fish and chips, calamari or whitebait

Seafood pastas and noodles like crab linguine with chilli and coriander or pad thai

Seafood and light vegetable risottos

White pizza or seafood-topped pizza

Spring vegetables such as peas, beans and asparagus - as you can see from this article

Light fresh cheeses such as young goat cheese, sheep cheese and feta. Beer and food matching guru Garret Oliver recommends an omelette with sharp apple and goats cheese

Salads, especially mozzarella basil and tomato salad, Greek salad and caesar salad

Brunch dishes

Potjevleesch - a chunky jellied terrine of pork, chicken and rabbit you find in north-east France

Lighter Thai and Mexican dishes flavoured with citrus and herbs

Thai green curries

Photo ©zavgsg at fotolia.com

Food pairings for wheat beer II - hefeweizen, dunkelweizen and other German-style wheat beers

German wheat beers are sufficiently different from Belgian wheat beers to merit a separate post - so what are the best food matches for hefeweizen with their striking banana and clove flavours?

Of course some of the same pairings will work but in my view hefeweizen are better with richer, sweeter seafood dishes and pork than witbier. They’re also less spicy so less good with the citrus and herb flavours that work so well with witbiers.

Hefeweizen such as Schneider Weisse and Franziskaner

Weisswurst and pretzels - THE classic south German breakfast pairing

Any kind of cured pork: sausages with potato salad, smokey hams - and the accompanying pickles

Roast chicken or pork

Fried chicken or veal (wiener schnitzel)

Chicken caesar salad

Richer seafood such as scallops and lobster (I’m betting lobster rolls are particularly good)

Hot smoked salmon and sautéed salmon

Chicken-based Tex Mex dishes like burritos

Apple tarts and turnovers

Mark Dredge suggests banana cake and roast banana in his book Craft Beer World. And Saveur comes up with this recipe for banana pudding which I must say I like the look of.

Dunkelweizen

Some of the above pairings will work with the richer, malty flavours of dunkelweizen but I would put more emphasis on:

Smoked ham and bacon

American-style BBQ

Mole (the Mexican dish not a small furry creature)

Fried chicken, veal or pork with a tomato and pepper sauce

Matured cheeses such as Gouda and Parmesan

If you found this article useful take a look at my post on matching witbiers. And there’s a useful article by beer writer Ben McFarland here on matching wheat beers. Quoting yours truly, as it happens . . .

Image by Wolf-Henry Dreblow from Pixabay

Pairing beer with dessert

If you were going to introduce someone to beer the last course you’d probably think of would be a dessert but as I discovered at a beer and pudding matching session at Brown’s Hotel in London it can be a surprisingly successful combination.

The problem is that when it works it’s sublime and when it doesn’t hit the spot it can be downright weird. Added to which not everyone agrees which the pairings work best . . . Here are my own impressions with the following ratings:

***** Sublime. An all-time-great pairing
**** Very good - the drink enhances the food and vice versa
*** A sound reliable match (generally)
** Fine but no fireworks
* A feasible match but one which may diminish the wine or the food
No stars A misfiring match

Lime and mango Eton Mess with Sol lager
You could see the thinking behind this pairing. You drink lime with Sol, lime goes with mango ergo Sol goes with mango but it didn’t quite work like that. For a start the Sol was served (oddly) in a red wine glass without its lime. And the Eton Mess - with alphonso mangoes I would guess was exceptionally rich and sweet. I asked to try it with the Sol served the traditional way in a bottle with a wedge of lime stuck in the neck and it was much better but you wouldn’t really want to serve it that way at home with a posh dessert, would you?
Rating *

Steamed orange pudding with Blue Moonwheat beer
This by contrast was a surprise hit. Blue Moon is an American wheat beer brewed in the Belgian style with a big hit of orange which actually complemented the orange in the light, airy steamed orange pudding perfectly. Lovely
Rating ****

Poached pear in white wine and Grolsch Weizen
Again you could see where this pairing was coming from. The Grolsch which is more in the style of a German weiss bier has quite a strong banana-y note which was actually quite in tune with the delicate vanilla flavour of the poached pear but it was slightly too sweet for the beer. Also you wouldn’t serve a dessert unadorned like that and when we added cream the beer immediately tasted bittr. An odd one.
Rating **

Spotted Dick with custard and Aventinus
It was worth attending the tasting just to experience this combination which everyone agreed was the best pairing. Why? Well this traditional English fruited pudding brought out a whole raft of spicy raisiny flavours in the beer which in turn gave an extra dimension to the dessert - almost like a sticky raisin sauce. Totally unexpected and totally brilliant!
Rating *****

Raspberry crème brulée with Innis & Gunn oak-aged beer, Bacchus Frambozen beer and Hix Oyster ale
These were the combinations that caused the most discussion and disagreement. Personally I thought the dessert too light and too sweet for both the richly malted Innis & Gunn and for the Oyster Ale, de-naturing them and making them taste excessively bitter but the majority preferred them to the Frambozen (raspberry beer which was also very sweet. I’ve tried berry-flavoured beers with creamy desserts before and they’ve worked (especially cheesecake) so I think it’s just a question of tweaking the level of sweetness in the dessert (panna cotta might have been better than crème brulée with its caramelised topping) and adding some fresh raspberries rather than cooked ones. (Innis & Gunn is a much better cheese beer IMO and porter a better match with chocolate.
Rating: Innis & Gunn and Hix Oyster Ale * Bacchus Frambozen ***

Ginger parkin and Worthington’s White Shield
Actually porter might have come into its own here too. Worthington’s White Shield, a very dry hoppy ale, certainly didn’t work for me. The very sweet dessert stripped it of all of its flavour. Again it would have been much, much happier - and hoppier - with cheese
Rating: no stars

Pannacotta with caramelised oranges with Goose Island IPA
If you taste it on its own, Goose Island is big, rich, sweet and generous. You wouldn’t have known it with this dessert. The orange really blew all those flavours away making it taste one-dimensional and bitter.
Rating: no stars

Verdict
A fascinating tasting that hinted at a number of interesting possibilities. Yes, several pairings misfired but if other beers and desserts had been chosen (odd that there was no chocolate dessert and no barley wine, for instance and no desserts with a spicy element which I think would have helped the matches) I think the hit rate would have significantly increased. Certainly, on the basis of this tasting, beer is a better match for steamed English puddings than wine is.

Photo by Valeria Boltneva