Cured and smoked pig jowl with Partizan IPA

I’ve highlighted the affinity of pork and IPA before but it’s good to be reminded just what a brilliant pairing it is.

Despite the excellent wine list the menu at the new Pitt Cue Co in the city actually cries out for a beer so we started with a Dr Rudi Lager from the Cloudwater Brew Co in Manchester (great with the grilled ‘kraut and smoked eel cream) and moved on to a Partizan IPA with the cured and smoked pig jowl and sides including an unctious bowl of mushroom and bone marrow mash and salt-baked celeriac and Isle of Mull. The sweetness (and strength) of the 7% beer was perfect with the slightly salty smoky pork. They’ll also be brewing their own beer shortly.

If you liked Pitt Cue in its previous incarnation you’ll love this new bigger version. Oh, and don’t miss the chicken and cep sausage.

Disclosure: I ate at Pitt Cue as a guest of the restaurant.

Sausage and gammon pie and Wiper & True Family Tree IPA

OK, pie and beer is not rocket science but sometimes it’s good to be reminded what a very good match they can be. Especially when both the pie and the beer come from the same place.

The pie was the super-crumbly warm sausage and gammon pie they serve at No 12 Easton in Bristol with a generous dollop of piccalilli and a fennel salad and the beer a bottle of local Bristol brewery Wiper & True's Family Tree IPA which contains Nugget, Simcoe and Mosaic hops. I was quite startled to find it was 7.2% ABV - the alcohol didn't seem at all overpowering

Being in the West Country, cider would of course have been an equally good option but I didn't miss wine at all.

How often do you put a bottle of beer on the table when you bake a pie for friends?

Guacamole, salsa and a citrussy pale ale

Last Friday night Helen, our designer, and I had a bit of a works outing to our colleague Monica Shaw's who works on the nuts and bolts of the website. She cooked up an amazing Mexican feast of which this was just one element but it was striking how much better the whole meal went with beer than with wine.

It wasn’t that the wine was bad. We had a deliciously limey Peter Lehmann Wigan riesling which went extremely well with the guacamole too - as did a Sauvignon Blanc and a new English rosé from Dunleavy vineyards just outside Bristol.

But the beers we had - a selection from Helen’s other clients Wild Beer Co, Arbor Ales and the Bristol Beer Factory - were just so easy with the widely varied ingredients and dishes we threw at them.

I’m singling out the guacamole (which was properly chunky) with our first and second beers, Wild Beer Co’s intensely hopped Fresh and Madness IPA because they both had a citrussy edge that went brilliantly with the lime and coriander in the dip.

We also had roast squash-stuffed tamales with mole poblano, a big roast corn and avocado salad, refried beans, stuffed jalapenos, tomato salad and homemade pickles a punchy/spicy combination which went really well with an Arbor Yakima Valley American-style IPA. (A red wine big enough to handle all those powerful flavours wouldn’t have been as refreshing)

I can’t pretend we found a beer to go with the chilli-spiked mango fruit salad and ice-creams and sorbets but we finished with a flourish with some intensely chocolatey truffles with candied chillies and the Bristol Beer Factory’s raspberry stout - an unlikely but knockout combination.

It was the big flavours in the beers that carried the day too. Light lagers and more traditional ales wouldn't have worked as well.

Hawksmoor hot dog and Seven Barrels Red Rye IPA

I know I said I was going to make a Riesling my match of the week but given that I've already written about it and that it's the Great British Beer Festival this week I'm going for this great combo at my son's restaurant, Hawksmoor. (Blatantly nepotistic, I know. Apologies)

The boys have been planning to introduce a hot dog for a while but couldn't find a British-sourced sausage that was up to scratch so this has been a year in development. I have to say it's a great one - light and smokey, just lightly grilled and served with melted onions, sweet mustard, homemade ketchup and, rather bizarrely - kimchi which also appears in one of their burgers.

I'm not so sure about the kimchi but the basic 'dog' is absolutely fantastic with their new Seven Barrels Red Rye IPA which has been brewed for them by the Kernel Brewery in London. It's a serious 6.5% bottle conditioned ale made from malted barley (85%) and rye (15%) with Amarillo and Mt. Hood hops, according to this review on the beer website ratebeer. I was going to order a lager but this was absolutely delicious - really rich and fruity. (The Spitalfields branch has its own ale, The Devil's Architect, made by Camden Brewery, which I've yet to try.)