How to pair beer and food

I was recently asked the question: “What am i looking for when matching beer and food? Do I want a beer with a similar taste or should I be looking for a contrast?”

Good question because beer actually behaves differently in many ways from wine as my son Will and I explained in our book An Appetite for Ale:

“As you’ve probably already discovered beer behaves differently from wine when it comes to food. Most lack acidity and tannin, two qualities that help wine match well. But it has other qualities such as bitterness, sweetness, carbonation, lower levels of alcohol and, most importantly, a range of flavours you simply don’t find in wine (chocolate, smoke and caramel to name just three) that more than compensate.

The most significant of those is bitterness, not likely to bother you if you’re a beer lover but which may bother friends you’re trying to get to share your enthusiasm. So far as food is concerned it’s a double-edged sword. It can be intrusive and jarring, much as an over-exuberant use of oak can be in wine, but also incredibly refreshing especially with foods that are sour, salty, fatty or in other ways palate-coating like chocolate and cheese.

There are two types of bitterness, hop bitterness and roasted malt bitterness. Hop bitterness works fantastically well with spices which is why IPAs are such a great match for spicy food while roasted malt bitterness has a palate-cleansing quality which can help with such disparate foods as roast or barbecued meats, cheese and chocolate. With a rich chocolate dessert for example you don’t want yet more richness in your glass. You want something that is going to be refreshing like a bitter porter or a sour wheat beer.

Complement or contrast?
People often talk about complementing or contrasting flavours with beer but we think that’s an unnecessarily complicated approach. All you need to ask yourself is “What sort of a drink do I want with this dish or this meal?” And that’s a question of balance. If you know the flavours are going to be delicate like a salad or a seafood risotto you want a beer that won’t overwhelm them such as a pilsner or a wheat beer. If the flavours are full as they would be in a steak and ale pie or a beef stew you want a beer of equal weight like a traditional British or a Belgian trappist ale. If the flavours are extreme - very hot, spicy or sweet - you want a beer that offers some respite and refreshment.

A similar common sense approach applies to deciding the order in which you’re going to serve beers. In general it’s better to drink lighter, drier beers before richer, sweeter, more powerful ones just as you serve lighter dishes before more intensely flavoured foods.

Light or dark?
If you’re just getting into beer you may not have fully grasped that beers don’t always taste as they look. A light colour doesn’t necessarily mean a light beer as those of you who have tried strong Belgian golden ales like Duvel will know. Nor does the fact that a beer is dark mean that it’s powerful. (Think of traditional British brown ales like Mann’s or stouts like Mackeson). So let flavour rather than colour be your guide.

Carbonation - or the lack of it
The other factor to take into account when you’re matching beer and food is carbonation. Of course this is more pronounced in some beers like wheat beers or pilsners than in others such as traditional British ales and virtually non-existent in a few like strong barley wines. But, again, if your palate is likely to be under assault from deep-fried, spicy or fatty foods, look to a beer where it’s more pronounced.

Carbonated drinks also support flavours better than still ones. If you drink a peach flavoured dessert wine with a peach-flavoured dessert for example the dessert will strip the peach flavours from the wine. The carbonation of a peach flavoured lambic on the other hand will preserve the fruit flavours of the beer, cleansing the palate between each mouthful and echoing but not overwhelming those of the dessert. It means you can rely on flavour rather than strength or sweetness for the match which again makes for a more refreshing experience.

Italian beer and food matching at Tozi

Sophie Atherton reports on the introduction of a new range of 'birra artigianale' (craft beer) at ciccetti restaurant, Tozi.

If you hear the words 'Italian beer' and immediately think of Peroni you need a wake-up call. The country now has in excess of 700 breweries, but in the UK Italian beer is apparently rather hard to find. What it clearly needs is a leg up from the Italian restaurant industry, which in turn needs someone to lead the way.

I may have found just the place, Tozi Restaurant and Bar, a stone's throw from Victoria Station. I was invited there a few weeks ago to taste a range of beers recently added to its drinks list, paired with a selection of 'cicchetti' dishes (the Venetian answer to tapas I'm told) from its regular menu.

It's always pleasing to encounter a restaurant prepared to embrace beer and food matching, even more so if it will be available to all and not just as a one-off to woo beer writers. The pairings were put together by importers, Beers from Italy and Italian beer sommelier Jacopo Mazzeo with input from Tozi head chef Maurilio Molteni - whose pedigree includes a stint at Shoreditch House as well as working with Antonio Carluccio.

All the beers used were from the same brewery, Birrificio Opperbacco, of Notaresco, Abruzzo an area better known for wines than for beer.

The first pairing was 4punto7 (4.7%) with two dishes, a salty but delicious calamari and roast fennel, carrots, beans and spelt salad. The persistent floral and bready aroma of the beer was almost a meal in itself. Less sweet than its fragrance suggested but with a floral quality and gentle dry finish, even after the first sip I was already mentally ordering another. Sadly the salty coating of the calamari overwhelmed the beer (despite the obvious intention that it would complement the calamari's sweetness and refresh the palate after the batter) but happily it worked much more harmoniously with the salad where the strong herbal character of the dish met the flavour of the beer as an equal.

Next came a beer called Tripping Flowers (6.1%), its bottle evoking the 1960s and hinting at the reason for its name. A saison, a style of beer now typified by a certain kind of yeast rather than its origins as a strong spring brew kept to quench the thirst of farm labourers in Belgian Wallonia, it was flavoured not just with hops but also roses and almonds. Snappily dry, as a good saison should be, there were notes of honey and lemon and an aftertaste of light-coloured dried fruits. Once paired with a heavenly crab ravioli with tomato and basil its floral flavours came through along with a zesty, hoppy tang in a match that proved it's possible to effectively pair beer with tomato sauce based dishes.

This point was emphatically brought home by the next pairing. Eipiei (6.3%) - pronounced IPA! - with aubergine parmigiana. The beer is Opperbacca's take on a US-style West Coast IPA, full of zesty, grapefruity hops and packing quite a bitter punch. The bitterness perfectly complemented the chargrilled skin of the aubergine and the beer became light and moussey, refreshing the palate ready for the next rich cheesy, tomatoey mouthful. It was this point in the meal where I decided I could just live at Tozi and never go home.

One always has to come down from a peak though and although L' Una Rossa (6.4%) smelled of cherries and tasted of roses it couldn't save me from the pungent aroma of black truffle on top of a buffalo ricotta ravioli. At the risk of sounding a churlish philistine the smell reminded me of laundry day and the pairing didn't do the beer justice, reducing it to bubblegum and pear drops. With pork cheeks, cavolo nero and mashed potato though the beer sang and revealed spicy aniseed and coriander flavours.

The delight of Testun al Barolo, a semi hard cow and goat cheese wrapped in a layer of nebbiolo grape husks, paired with a strong IPA called Triplipa (7.8% above) in a match which tasted like a sophisticated cheese and pineapple stick, and a finale of Dieci e lode (10%) a hefty quadruple style brew full of plummy, liquorice flavours matched with a coffee and amaretto bonet (a dessert from Piedmont) effectively erased my moment of black truffle-loathing and left me with a strong desire to return to Tozi with all my friends. Which is, coincidentally, how its name translates.

Sophie Atherton is a freelance journalist and Beer Sommelier with her own blog A FemALE view on beer. She ate at Tozi as a guest of importers Beers from Italy.

American beers at Kitty Fisher's

The American Brewers Association chose uber-cool Kitty Fisher's in Shepherd Market, Mayfair for their annual lunch for British beer writers this week. Sophie Atherton reports on the outcome.

"Cometh August, cometh the Great British Beer Festival and a flurry of other beer-related activity around it. One of the best pre-GBBF events is the Brewers Association lunch, at which it shows off the wares of the American craft brewers it represents and demonstrates the endless potential for matching beer and food.

This year's event was held at restaurant of the moment, Kitty Fisher's in Mayfair. To say it's a modern British restaurant, serving food with Spanish influences and describing itself as a wood grill tells you little. If I add the chef is Young British Foodie 2014 winner, Tomos Parry (left with chef Adam Duyle of the Brewers Association, centre) who says he likes to 'bring an element of charcoal into unusual places', you'll start to get it. When I explain trying to book a table is nigh on impossible because it's a favoured celeb haunt and has been written up by every high profile restaurant critic you can think of you'll get the full picture.

The BA chose well, not just because of Kitty Fisher's reputation but because the chef was genuinely keen on pairing his menu with beer - although I was a little surprised to hear him say beers from the US are quite different from British brews in a way that suggests he might not be up to speed with the burgeoning UK beer scene.

After pre-lunch beers including the deliciously summery Hell or High Watermelon Wheat beer from San Francisco's 21st Amendment Brewery - in which you can taste the watermelon - the meal began with Smoked Cod’s Roe, Fennel Butter, and Grilled Bread served with Dogfish Head's (Milton, Delaware) Berliner-Weisse style sour beer flavoured with peaches, called Festina Peche.

BA Chef Adam Dulye worked with Parry on the pairings and told me the aim was that the effervescence of the beer should refresh the palate after the rich and smokey flavours of the cod roe and bread. It worked, but the salty cod roe altered the flavour of the beer from zingy peaches to something rather cidery - albeit not unpleasant.

The next dish paired two different pilsners with Burrata, beetroot and gooseberries (although I had no beetroot as it doesn't agree with me). I favoured Sierra Nevada's Nooner pilsner* - which was clean tasting and assertively hoppy compared with the rather lemony Prima Pils from Victory Brewing, Pennsylvania. The match was intended to bring up the hops in the beer - which it did with the Nooner but seemed to do the opposite with the Prima Pils. I'd never thought of pairing a pilsner with a dairy dish before though and am now keen to experiment.

A curious dish of barbecued cucumber, seaweed and Cornish crab was next, paired with two US-style 'session IPAs'. Daytime Ale from California's Lagunitas brewery worked with the dish almost like a squeeze of lemon on seafood whereas Colorado brewery Oskar Blues' Pinner had its hops knocked back and sweetened.

The biggest talking point of the lunch was the 14 yr old Galician Blonde Rib Eye steak (above) served with Scottish Girolles, Onion and Pickled Walnut - which usually comes with an £80 price tag. Mature Spanish dairy cows can be slaughtered for their meat whereas in the UK most of our steaks apparently come from cows that are only two or three years old. The difference in the flavour of the meat is obvious. It was sweet, rich and earthy - nothing like the metallic bloody tang of an average medium rare rump.

Of the two beers proffered with it No-Li Brown Ale from No-Li Brewhouse, Spokane, Washington was the better match. The rich meat and accompanying mushrooms brought out the chocolatey flavours of the malt, knocked back the zesty US hops and left the other beer pairing, a delicious big, hoppy Big Swell IPA from Maui Brewing Co, for dead.

Glorious blobs of chocolate cremoso with tart black cherries, creme fraiche and hazelnuts embraced and, frankly, smooched with a chocolatey Porter from Founders Brewing of Michigan to end a meal in which Dulye's intention that our palates be constantly refreshed and never worn out was realised.

I just wish more restaurants did beer and food matching as a matter of course, open to all, rather than only doing so when asked to put on a special event for the beer industry.

* the Nooner pisner is about to arrive in the UK.

Sophie Atherton ate at Kitty Fisher's as a guest of the Brewers Association.

Sophie Atherton was the first woman in the UK to be accredited as a beer sommelier. A journalist for 15 years and a beer drinker for more than 25 she now combines the two by writing for the national press, CAMRA's BEER magazine and as beer columnist for Great British Food. She also does beer-based consultancy for the likes of the London Wine Fair, speaks and runs tastings around the UK and is regularly asked to talk about beer on national and local radio. Find out more about Sophie and read some of her work on her blog A FemAle View on Beer.

Moncada Brewery Notting Hill Red

This week I took part in a fun new way of discovering beer: Beer Bods live Twitter tastings and this was the beer we tried this week.

The ingenious idea is to encourage beer drinkers to experiment more by sending them a case of 12 bottles (not free, obviously - the quarterly subscription is £36). You then drink one of the beers each week at a suggested time (9pm on a Thursday evening) and compare notes on Twitter.

There’s also background on the beer you’re tasting on the site which revealed that Moncara was founded by a young Argentinian, Julio, who fell in love with British beer when he came to the UK as a student.

I must say they couldn’t have started with a better beer than the Notting Hill Red for me. It was deliciously full-flavoured (6%), fruity and refreshing with a good hit of American hops and an appealing herbiness. I could imagine drinking it with ‘asado’, Argentina’s much revered barbecue, especially their spicy garlicky sausages. And, of course, a steak.

Interestingly the beer is also ‘natural’ - i.e. they do not use any cask finings, a process that removes yeast particles but also strips out flavour, giving the beer more of a cloudy appearance than most commercially produced beers. They also recycle the by-products of the brewing process: the spent cereal goes to one of the farmers at the local farmers’ market, the hops are composed at a local wildlife garden and some of the yeast goes to a local baker.

The only downside I can see is that you wouldn’t necessarily be around every Thursday but you can still read the story behind the beer and check out what people have been saying about it on the site. (You hashtag your tweets #beerbods.) Interestingly not everyone liked the beer as much as I did - some found it too strong.

You can buy the beers through BeerBods during the week following their featured slot: Notting Hill Red is on sale until next Thursday - or maybe Wednesday - at 12 bottles for £30.

Incidentally BeerBods is a successful crowd-funded project (through crowdcube.com) which hit its initial £100,000 target in 24 hours. I think it’s a really clever idea and an ideal way of helping people like me discover new brewers. It would make a great gift for any beerlover.

Disclosure: I received a free three month subscription from Beer Bods to try out the scheme