by Garrett Oliver
A mere twenty years ago, the United States remained mired in the culinary Dark Ages that many of us grew up in. Vegetables came in frozen blocks, coffee came in crystals, there were three kinds of cheese, two kinds of bread (regular bread and regular bread with food coloring, which they called "wheat bread"), we all knew the names of five brands of margarine and ketchup was king. And there was one kind of beer, an empty, neutered industrial product best suited to washing down hot dogs.
In the late 70's, dawn broke over California and swept out over the nation. The revolution has been swift and the transformation total. Supermarket aisles now burgeon with fresh vegetables, fifteen types of bread, dozens of cheeses and a host of olive oils, and salsa has dethroned king ketchup. And real beer is suddenly everywhere. The United States now has the most vibrant beer culture in the world, and our beer culture is part and parcel of our wider culinary revolution. In a land where people are now happily paying $4.00 for a cup of coffee, the best beer on earth can be had for considerably less. Great beer is the new affordable luxury, and some have gone so far as to say that "craft beer is the new wine."
I beg to differ - real beer is much more than that. As much as I love wine (and I genuinely do), wine is no match for beer where it really counts – at the dinner table. The classic orthodoxy, of course, is that wine is the best accompaniment for food, but that orthodoxy assumes that the wine is very good and that the beer is industrial. Real beer, however, has a much larger range of flavors to offer to food, and this is one of the keys to its culinary superiority. Beer does very well on wine's traditional European playing fields, but there are many cuisines where wine is easily trumped – Indian, Mexican, Thai, Chinese, Cajun, Vietnamese, Japanese, and American barbecue spring to mind. Wine flavors range from the light white Kabinett riesling through to inky California Zinfandel. That's impressive, but beer flavors range from the light citrusy lilt of Belgian witbier to the chocolaty depths of imperial stout. Along the way, we encounter a number of flavors that wine doesn't have, and it just so happens that these are many of the same flavors that we love in our food. Wine just doesn't deliver bold flavors of coffee, chocolate, caramel, oranges or smoke, to name a few.
Another advantage that beer enjoys is carbonation. Carbonation physically scrubs your palate (scrubbing bubbles!), lifting away oils, fats and strong flavors and re-setting your palate for the next bite. That's one reason why beer works so well with mouth-coating foods that wine writers tell you to avoid, like eggs, chocolate, and yes – cheese.
Choosing the right beer can turn a simple meal into a revelatory flavor experience. So how do we choose the right beer? Actually, it's pretty easy. First, we want to match up the impact of the food and the beer on the palate. Belgian wheat beer is a low-impact beer, whereas IPA is a high-impact beer. On the food side, delicate fish is a low-impact food, but spicy pork tacos have a high impact on the palate. As long as the beer doesn't overwhelm the food or vice versa, we're doing okay in this department. Then we can move on to the fun part, which I call setting the flavor hook.
The flavor hook is the element of the beer's flavor that mirrors a similar flavor in the food. When the two flavors meet on your tongue, they "recognize" each other and the result can be a beautiful match. Here are a few examples of flavor hooks:
Caramelization: Whether it's the skin on a piece of fried chicken or the surface of a charbroiled steak, we crave the flavors created when heat caramelizes the sugar in meats, starches and vegetables. Here wine can only provide a contrast, but beers made with caramelized malts can play harmony. Amber ales and lagers, brown ales and porters know the tune, and the caramel and crystal malts in these beers can lead the way to perfect matches with everything from roasted meats and vegetables to seared sea scallops in brown butter.
Roast: Beers made with roasted malts develop flavors of chocolate and coffee. Chocolate and coffee offer an amazing variety of flavors and so do the malts these beers are made with. A beer can have a flavor of American milk chocolate or of French dark chocolate. A stout can taste like a biting espresso, or it can have the character of a sweetened latté. These roasted flavors in beer have a flavor hook that matches up perfectly with the char on grilled foods. The same flavors also provide a brilliant counterpoint to the saltiness of good ham or prosciutto. With desserts, strong roasty stouts can demonstrate true brilliance, perfectly matching chocolate and providing a wonderful contrast to ice cream and fruit desserts. Wine, being incapable of true roasted flavors, can't even come close.
Citrus: American hops such as the well-loved Cascade often display bright flavors and aromas of grapefruit and lime. I've always suspected that classic American pale ales were pretty much made to go with foods made with citrus juice, especially Mexican and Thai. When you toss in the cilantro common to both cuisines, you take the match even further – cilantro has a distinctly hoppy aroma. Belgian wheat beers have another citrus hook – Curacao orange peel, which picks up beautifully on citrusy flavors in food.
Matching up the impact of your beer and food and then putting these flavor hooks into action will instantly improve your "food life". You'll see the basic principles at work in a few of my favorite everyday matches below:
Salads and Wheat Beer: The low bitterness and slight tartness of wheat beers, both Belgian and German, play into everything you need for a salad and its dressing. The acidity echoes citrus and vinegar-based dressings, while the light bitterness allows the greens to show through. This is especially important in salads containing bitter greens such as mustard, spinach or many lettuces. Even if the salad if dressed with strips of duck, bits of bacon lardon, goat cheese, or sliced of hard-boiled egg, don't worry - wheat beers love these things as much as you do. Not surprisingly, wheat beers are also perfect for brunch.
Oily fish, hoppy beers: I respect sole, but I love salmon. Salmon, tuna, swordfish, mackerel, sardines, anchovies, pompano, bluefish - they're forgiving in the kitchen and big enough to take on some bigger beers. German Pilsners, American Pale Ales and Belgian Saisons can all work here. They have assertive bitterness, dryness, and bright flavors in common, all of which are needed with the assertive flavors of these fish. Get a salmon steak, slather it in olive oil and cracked black pepper and then grill or broil it. Serve with a classic Belgian saison and you've got real fireworks. If there are spices involved, you can move towards an American pale ale (though saison will still work), where the grapefruit and pine-needle aromas of American hops can go to work with cumin, chilies and cilantro. And on a summer day, coarsely salted grilled sardines and a nicely chilled snappy pilsner are a gift from heaven.
Herbal dishes, Herbal beers: A wide range of beers can handle herbs nicely, but a few styles shine. Go with Belgian saisons, tripels, golden ales or French biéres de garde, all of which have distinctly herbal aromatics that pair beautifully with powerful herb treatments such as pesto. Despite its Italian origins, pesto is the ruin of many wines, and few wines will work with it as well as beers such as Castelain, Westmalle Tripel, Duvel or their American counterparts. Not only do these beers have the herbal component to match the herbs themselves, but the carbonation helps lift the olive oil from the palate and cool the burn of the garlic.
Hot dishes, Bright snappy beers: While I respect the can-do attitude of today's hot-shot young sommeliers, I've got some bad news for them, and they might as well just accept it: wine and hot, spicy food just don't work very well together. Hot spices distort and exaggerate wine flavors - tannins become tough and grainy, alcohol turns fiery, oak turns to furniture polish. Not to mention wine's almost total lack of affinity for cilantro, cumin, ginger, mustard, cinnamon, cardamom, and other spices common in a lot of the food we love. I'm not saying that a decent match with wine is impossible, but it is certainly difficult. Matching these dishes with beer is easy – beer leaps in where wine fears to tread. Beer has sweetness to counteract the heat, far less alcohol, and bubbles to soothe the palate and lift hot oils away. Hop and fermentation aromatics can do wonders with the spices I just mentioned, and the right choice will really sing. Weissbiers, witbiers, pilsners, American pale ales and Belgian saisons all do very nicely here.
Dessert with Fruit beers and Strong Stouts: Your slice of delicious chocolate mud cake has arrived, with a nice big scoop of vanilla ice cream on the side. Wine can't go there, and shouldn't even try. Even port will shipwreck on a dessert like this – you won't even taste it. A nice imperial stout will wonderfully match the chocolate flavors of the cake, while counterpointing the flavor of the ice cream. It's unbeatable, but there is one contender – sweet framboise. Raspberries and chocolate? Raspberries and vanilla ice cream? Do I need to say more?
Cheese with Beer: You could write a whole book on this. Most influential wine writers point out that it is actually very difficult to match wine and cheese, and some even go so far as to suggest beer instead. Beer has carbonation and bitterness to cut through the paste of cheese and then uses its full range of flavors to play wonderful harmonies. Great matches include goat cheese with witbier, IPA with farmhouse cheddar, bière de garde with smelly French cheeses like Livarot, brown ale with pecorino, barleywine with Stilton and framboise with mascarpone. The possibilities are endless.
There's barely room here to scratch the surface of all the exciting things that beer can do with food. Now that great beer is available almost anywhere and the average American has the food traditions of the whole world to choose from, there's a lifetime of wonderful meals awaiting us all. Have fun out there!
Copyright © Garrett Oliver, 2003. All Rights Reserved.