Slow-cooked salmon with a yuzu-flavoured beer

I dithered between two brilliant beer pairings at the British Guild of Beer Writers Beer Meets Food event at the Wild Beer Co, Wapping Wharf last week, both of which involved citrus.

The first was a dish of slow cooked salmon with spiced and pickled cucumber and herb crème fraîche which was served with the Wild Beer Co’s Yokai, a 4.5% beer brewed with yuzu (a Japanese citrus fruit), kelp seaweed and Sichuan peppercorns. Beer doesn’t generally exhibit acidity but this was a wonderfully refreshing counterpoint to the richness of the salmon.

The other was even more daring - a lemon tart served with chantilly cream and Sleeping Lemons sour beer which is made with salty preserved lemons. I would never have thought it would have been able to handle the sweetness of the dessert but it just piled lemon flavour on lemon in the most delicious fashion.

The only reason why I went for the salmon pairing as my match of the week is that it’s probably more to most beer drinkers' taste and easier to replicate - although you’d probably have to pick up a can of Yokai for the full effect (The Wild Beer Co sells it on their website for £2.50) Not that that's any hardship ...

You may also like to check out 10 Great Wine Pairings with Salmon

I attended the BGBW lunch as a presenter, talking about how the seasons can affect our choice of beer. (Both these strike me as really summery)