Beer Pairing

Malt

• The sweetness of malt reduces the heat of spicy food. In comparison, wine’s higher alcohol actually accentuates the warmth from many spices, which can be undesirable.
• Malt-forward beer styles include: brown ale, bock, porter, red ale, scotch and scottish ale, stout and Vienna lager
• The flavors of malt, which can range from caramel, chocolate, graham cracker, roast, toasted and toffee, harmonize with grilled, roasted and smoked foods because share many of these same flavors.

Hops

• Hop bitterness cuts through the fat in food, lessening the dense heavy feeling in your mouth. This allows you to more fully taste the ingredients of your dish and enjoy the true flavors of both your craft beer and food.
• Hop bitterness balances both malt and food’s sweetness.
• Hops may intensify spices and heat. A good rule of thumb is to pair malt-forward beers with spicy foods and hop-forward beers with rich or fatty foods.
• What hops bring to the tasting party depends on when they were added to the batch of beer and the type of hop used.

Carbonation

Beer’s carbonation (bubbles) works to scrub the tongue of fat and prepares your palate for the next bite.

Salt

Salt flavors in food counter acidic flavors in beer—sour or wild ales become less acidic with salty foods. Sour beer styles include: Berliner weiss, gueze, lambic, flanders red and many “wild” or funkified beers.

Acidity

Acidity exists to a certain extent in all foods, especially tomato dishes and many salad dressings. When you match acidic food with acidic beer, they nullify each other and only mute the overall acidity. This is desirable and helps enhance the enjoyment of both the dish and the beer.

Sweetness

Sweetness in either food or beer paired with an acidic counterpart increases the acidity. So avoid pairing sweet and acidic flavors together—imagine toothpaste and orange juice.

The same effect of acidic food with acidic beverage happens when you pair sweet with sweet. Try pairing a Belgian quadruple (often over 10% ABV) with a dense sweet dessert. You’ll see how the sweetness of the beer lessens the sweetness of the dessert and vice versa.

Fat

Acidic beverages cut fat, and that helps the palate sense more of the flavors from a fatty, rich or dense dish. See the above section on hops to learn why craft beers, which tend to be more bitter than mass produced lagers, work so well with dishes on the richer side.

Spice, Herbs and Heat

There are fundamental differences between spice, herbs and heat. For our discussion, we want to talk about heat—those additions to food that make your eyes water and your nose run—think capsaicin from chili peppers or pepper flakes.

Heat intensifies alcohol, and as the alcohol penetrates your tongue and lips it acts like a solvent, which opens up your senses even more to the heat! The higher the ABV, the more you’ll notice this effect.

Be careful when pairing spicy foods with higher alcohol beverages as the pairing leaves you more vulnerable to the heat used to flavor your dish. Restrained heat and alcohol is nice, and creates a warming sensation in the mouth, but too much heat and alcohol is like throwing oil on fire.

Cheers and happy pairing!