I Drank in College so I'd Avoid Science
It has since been heralded the Craft Beer Revolution – the
cult following of microbrews blossoming, overflowing into the mainstream
throughout the last decade. Its popularization comes along with that of gourmet
gastropubs; incidentally, these new style eateries feature an array of craft
beers, while some craft breweries offer an eclectic gourmet food menu. With the climbing interest in flavorful beers
nation wide, that beer pairs as richly and complexly with food as wine does is
substantive, and restaurants, wholesalers, even roaming food trucks are
capitalizing on this truth.
However, be it gastropub-hosted beer pairings or
to-the-source Internet research, recommendations for honing your pairing palate
may leave you baffled. Why does one gastropub pair its spicy curry chicken
skewers with an IPA, while another opts for a porter? Fundamentally, the beers
are completely different. Baffling, indeed. But the answer is simple, perhaps
overly simple: food (and beer) is all about taste – your taste. And your taste
preferences vary from the chef’s and the brewer’s and your date’s and your
mates’. Not to mention, your tastes can change. There is, however one
unchanging, invariable constant when it comes to pairing beer with food.
Science.
While preferences vary between individuals, tastes and
flavors – and the combinations thereof – don’t. Much of this has to do with
chemical reactions (that science stuff I mentioned earlier). For instance,
bitterness and alcohol both, individually and collaboratively, enhance the
caustic quality of spices, while the sweetness of malts counters that heat. So,
why would a chef pair a bitter IPA with a spicy curry dish? Either he’s a
sadist, or he wants to accentuate the spices in his dish. Oppositely, the chef
pairing her dish with a porter might worry about that enhancing the spiciness
with an astringent and characteristically ABV-generous IPA may overpower the
other, perhaps more subtle flavors in her recipe. It all depends on the characteristics
you want to home your palate.
A Homerun Match*
The Dish: The Dubliner’s Beef Curry Stew. A
simple, yet delicious, and definitively spicy curry featuring tender pieces of
beef and flavorful vegetables.
The Beer: Breckenridge Vanilla Porter. I love
curry, and I like it with a
kick.
Anticipating just that, I ordered this dish with
Breckenridge Brewery’s Vanilla Porter. The natural sweetnes of
malts, accompanied with this porter’s light vanilla tones and low ABV (4.0%),
balances and calms spiciness without detracting from the aromas and flavor of
this curry. Additionally, the malts’ light roasted flavor harmonizes with the
wholesomeness of the beef chunks, working with the fat to create a filling
meal.
The Outcome: This
turned out to be a great combo, perfect for that particular night: warm, with
outside seating. Not ideal for a super-spice meal; I didn’t particularly want
my forehead to start breaking out in sweat, tears to start pooling in my eyes,
and mucus to conspicuously drip from my nose – in front of my girlfriend.
The But: I’m a
hophead; IPAs are my favorite. If there had been a refreshing chill in the air,
an IPA would have been a stellar choice to heighten the heat of this stew. And
still, I could have taken it two ways: a somewhat carbonated IPA with the
fruitiness of cintra hops (like Sierra Nevada Torpedo Extra IPA) would have
turned on the heat, while the carbonation would have cut through the beef fat.
Alternatively, I could have got the same kick, but with the satiation of wholesome
meal with a smoother IPA like Ballast Point’s Big Eye IPA, or a super-smooth
nitro-infused brew.
Of course, there’s more to beer than just hops and malts,
more to food than just spice and fat. There are a plethora of taste and flavor
characteristics in both beer and food that work wonders (or plunders) with each
other. But it all depends on your specific tastes. With all the scientific
rules out there regarding beer and food pairings (Sweet
increases Salt, Acid
calms Salt,
Roast
counters Sweet… it’s like an
elaborate, quasi-arbitrary game of rock-paper-scissors), the only rule you
should definitely follow happens to be a rule both of science and of thumb:
experiment. Enjoy both what you’re eating and what you’re drinking. If the
combination works out, great. If not, just order another beer. That always does
the trick.
* Homerun is the actual term designated for a truly great beer-food match.
