Craft beer (that's the stuff that is brewed with real ingredients, has a specific style and bags of taste. Can be called real ale in the UK, or traditional ale in the States) is the new star with the international cuisines that we are all eating today. Craft beer can do amazing things with food, and it goes places where wine cannot go. Don't get me wrong - I love wine. I've spent some very pleasurable days of my life in France, sipping Burgundy over four hour lunches. I've even got a minor diploma in wine tasting. I'm not just a beer geek. Wine is wonderful, but lets be honest - it can't do everything.
Craft beer can do everything. Mexican, Thai, Japanese, Indian, Cajun and Middle Eastern food, and barbecue, are far better with real beer than with wine. Even with traditionally wine friendly foods, beer often shows superior versatility and flavour compatibility. The range of flavours and aromas in beer is vast - it's deep and wide and tall, and it easily surpasses that of wine. Beer has bitterness to slice through the fat, carbonation to refresh the palate, caramelised flavours to match those in your food, and sweetness to quench the fire of chilies.
If you've tasted only mass-market beer, I'm afraid that you haven't actually tasted beer at all. Craft beer can be imperial stout, matching your dessert with flavours as bold, chocolatey, and roasty as espresso, or it can be a Belgian wit, matching your fish dish with flavours as light and citrusy as fresh lemons. It can be American pale ale, full of bright grapefruit and smelling of pine needles, or a Belgian Framboise, as fruity and as sharp as a raspberry sorbet. It can be a ten year old British barley wine, as warming and complex as a vintage port, or an Indian pale ale, spritzy and full of the aromas of a tropical fruit orchard.
When paired with food, these flavourful beers can really make the meal sing. No matter how complex or refined the dish, whether it's foie gras or a simple smoked sausage, there is a beer out there that will provide the perfect accompaniment. If you love food, but only know wine, then you are trying to write a song using only half the notes and half the band.
Beer by itself can be wonderful. Food however, is where it all comes together. Most of us, myself included, can clearly remember some of the best meals we've ever had. Those meals stand out as peak moments in our lives. Mine was the De Karmeliet in Brugge about twenty five years ago. It was the first real six course meal in a posh restaurant I'd ever had - I couldn't believe you got free sorbet between each course!
Unfortunately, not all meals can be Michelin standard. There are times when meals seem rushed and food is little more than fuel. Even when you've had a good meal, there's often something missing. This is where beer can help you.
As I mentioned, if, to you, "beer" means the yellow fizzy stuff sitting in cans on supermarket shelves, I want you to empty your mind of the fact that these beers actually exist. We're not including them in this little project. We're talking about the real thing here. And this is what real beer can do: it can make every single meal you have an interesting and flavourful experience. It's something that can actually make you pay attention to what's happening on your palate. Paying a little attention to both your food and your beer, is the difference to having an "ok" cooking and eating experience, and having one filled with flavour and lots of it. You'll have to cook or buy nice meals though, beer won't turn a Big Mac into a feast, but it can turn a good chilli into a firework display, or a simple roast chicken into a spectacular meal.
Can't wine do the same thing? Yes and no. I like wine, and frequently enjoy it with my meals. But I don't enjoy wine with all meals. A rack of lamb or some roast beef? Sure, I'd probably crack open a bottle of red. But how about Mexican, Thai, Indian, Chinese? I love this type of food, and I don't want wine with it. I've had the wine that is supposed to match these foods, but in my opinion, they are a poor substitute for beer. The spices in these dishes distorts the delicate wine flavours, turning white wines sickly and red wines bitter. Wine doesn't refresh the palate like beer does. Nor does wine have caramelised flavours to match my Chinese sticky ribs.
Even wine experts admit that there are many foods that are simply no good with wine. They call these "tricky ingredients". Here's a list: Eggs, chili, smoked meat, smoked fish, tomato, ginger, curry, chocolate, avocado, garlic, spinach, artichokes, asparagus, cumin.
You guessed it, beer has no problem with these ingredients. Wheat beers are great with eggs, spicy Saison or Double IPA's are great with chili, cumin, curry and ginger. Imperial stouts are perfectly suited for chocolate desserts. Each beer really has it's own match for all the types of food and flavours we enjoy.
Another food product that people always associate with wine is cheese. I bet you can't believe I'm about to say that cheese doesn't go with wine. The much hidden secret in the world of wine, is that most wine, especially red, is a very poor match for cheese. Ask any honest sommelier. One well respected wine writer says in this book, that he's had to conclude that the idea of matching red wine with cheese "basically doesn't really work most of the time". He goes onto say that the relationship between cheese and wine is more like a "wary relationship than a real marriage". Another writer says that matching cheese and wine is "fraught with confrontations", and yet another goes onto say that even mild cheeses like Brie, can "clash horribly, especially if you let them get too ripe and runny".
Someone once told me an interesting observation. He said that the places you are normally offered wine and cheese together, are weddings, parties and functions opening a new art gallery or something. He went onto say that the reason why many people end up serving wine with cheese, is that the cheese coats the palate, blunting the flavour of the wine. This makes cheap wine taste pretty much ok. It's why quite a lot of wine shops try and push the cheese and wine combination.
Traditional beer and cheese on the other hand, are absolutely perfect together. And it's not very suprising when you think about it. Beer and cheese are both traditionally farmhouse products, and back in the old days, they were made by the same person. They both derive, to some extent from grasses, they are both fermented and aged, and they both have bacteria (although not the same type) doing the fermenting. And they both have similar flavour attributes - sweetness and acidity, fruitiness and yeasty. Many cheese makers have gone on to become brewers and vice versa. As I said, beer was traditionally made on a farm.
Have you ever seen a cow in a vineyard?
Of course we're talking about cheese with serious, complex and for want of a better word, funky flavours. So just as I said disregard the fizzy yellow beer on the supermarket shelves, do the same with those packets of hiirte juust (mouse cheese in English) on the shelves in the next aisle. The key thing to matching beer with cheese is that you can find harmony as well as contrast. If you take one of my favourite cheeses, Cheddar, you'll find nutty, fruit flavours, and a sharp acidity in the cheese. This means you'll look for a beer that has some nice bitterness to work with the cheeses sharpness, and some nice fruit character and maltiness to match the fruit and nuts in the cheese. An India Pale Ale fits the bill perfectly. Think of one of the very first pub meals - the ploughmans lunch (again, the farm connection), and you now start to understand why cheese, cold meat and fresh bread were paired with a traditional ale.
Want some Gruyere? It's easy to match a beer to the cheeses nutty, acidic, milky flavours. Think of a wine that tastes milky with hints of nuts? Neither can I.
I once was part of a dinner event that not only matched cheese and wine, but also beer and wine. There were seven different cheeses, and each had a wine and beer paired with them. Many of the people thought it was crazy that a beer could even sit on the same table as cheese and wine, but as each course finished, more and more of them were siding with the beer. There is just no way a wine can pair better with a strong cheese like Stilton or even Stinking Bishop, like a Barley wine, French Saison, or Belgian Tripel. The people begrudgingly admitted that the beer had won the battle, and they were all suprised to hear the wine sommelier admit that he knew he would lose the competition. For the record, not one of the wines that were paired with the cheese was red - they were all dry whites.
If you're at a dinner party, the host traditionally wheels out the dessert wine to go with the sweet stuff. Most decline. It's sweetness vs sweetness. Traditional fruit beers open up a whole different set of possibilities, especially with sweet cheeses like mascarpone and goats cheese. Here the sweetness, compared with the tart flavours of fruits such as cherry, raspberry or blackcurrants, work very well.
And as for coffee - why not try an imperial stout or coffee porter instead? Believe me, once you've tried beer with not just cheese, but dessert, roasts, Chinese, Indian, whatever - you just won't go back.
I think the market has advanced so much now, that it's socially acceptable to bring (good) beer to a dinner party. In years gone by, when the only beer available was the aforementioned yellow fizzy stuff in cans, it would have been pretty embarrassing if you turned up and put your four pack down next to all the bottles of wine that the others had brought. Wine was the sophisticated drink, beer was looked down upon. I think there as now been a bit of a role reversal. When I turn up to a dinner party (it rarely happens to be honest!), I always make sure I choose and interesting beer - most likely in a 75cl bottle. So many people assume it's a wine, and when it's poured into their glass and they taste it, you can see them struggling, trying to work out what sort of wine it is. A bottle of Deus is mistaken for champagne, a bottle of Kasteel Rouge is mistaken for some sort of Italian strawberry sparkling wine, and a merlot barrel aged Mikkeller stout, is mistaken for a good, vintage red.
Think about it next time you are offered wine at that next function you attend, you might want to embarrass them and bring some decent beer with you next time.
Cheers!
James
Ps....for those who don't know (is there really anyone I haven't told yet?!), I like beer and food so much, I've written a book about it. Specifically British pub food and what beer to drink with it. Let me know if you're interested in the book if you're not in Estonia.....
