Craft Beer and Food Pairing Specifics

Why Do Craft Beer and Food Work So Well Together?

By Julia Herz, Certified Cicerone®

In general, there are four main ingredients in craft beer: malted barley (or malted wheat or other cereal grains), hops, yeast and water. Malt and hop flavors tend to be the most prominent and can easily be paired with foods. Additionally, beer's carbonation plays a role in food pairing. Let's take a closer look...

Malt

The sweetness of malt reduces the heat of spicy food*. Try it out. Sip a malty brown ale with a spicy Thai dish or try a Scotch Ale with some spicy Mexican food. Intensely spiced foods, which have become a popular component of today's American diet, are complemented by craft beer’s ability to diminish heat. In comparison, wine’s higher alcohol actually accentuates the warmth from many spices which can be undesirable.
Matly Styles to consider with fired up foods include: Brown Ale, Bocks, Porters, Red Ales, Scotch and Scottish Ales, Stouts, Vienna Lagers and more!
Malt bonus: The flavors of malt (caramel, chocolate, graham cracker, roast, toasted, toffee) harmonize with grilled, roasted and smoked foods because malt contains many of these flavors.

Hops

Much of what we eat today has rich sauces with added fat or butter. Hop bitterness can counteract with rich sauces resulting in desirable results.

Hops bitterness cuts through the fat in food thus lessening the dense heavy feeing in your mouth. This is pleasurable as it allows you to more fully taste the ingredients of your dish and enjoy the true flavors of both your craft beer and the food.
Hops’ balance malt’s sweetness and is the soul of many craft beers.
Be careful. Hops may intensify spices and heat so a good rule of thumb is to pair malt forward beers with spicy foods and hop forward beers with rich or fatty foods. However, don't be shy. Experiment, experiment and try out some more highly hopped beers with spicy foods, such as with curry, and taste what happens.

Carbonation

Beer's carbonation (bubbles) scrubs the tongue of fat and prepares it for the next bite. This is a good thing!

How To Pair:

When you pair food and craft beer, you want to remember to pair to the 'preparation of the dish', instead of just pairing to the original protein.

It makes sense to say that all the flavors in any dish are determined by the preparation AND its ingredients. Before trying to create a pairing, ask yourself how the dish was cooked. Was it caramelized from grilling, steamed on a stove top or just tossed with olive oil? Is the sauce acidic tomatoes or a rich cheesy alfredo? What kind of seasoning, herbs or spices were added? All of these elements add to the overall flavor impact of the dish.

Beer and Salad Also remember, matching like with like in both strength and ingredients, will help you find harmonies and flavor hooks that make the food and beer shine. What this means is you might not want a light American lager paired against a rich dense chocolate cheese cake (that poor lager is going to get knocked down and won't shine like it should). On the reverse side, a salad with a light olive oil dressing paired against a Belgian Tripel is not likely to harmonize (the salad is too light against the sweeter 9% abv tripel).

Print out our craft beer and food pairing chart for a great set of examples on what types of beer styles work with different types of foods.

Interaction of Beer and Food Elements

Salt

Salt in food counters sour in beer—sour beers become less acidic with salty foods. A few examples of sour beers include, Berliner Weiss, Gueze, Lambics, Flanders Red & Brown, and many of today's 'wild' or funkified beers.

Acidity

Acidity exists to a certain extent in all food dishes, especially tomato dishes and many salad dressings. When you match acidic food with acidic beer, they nullify each other and only mute the acidity tasted. This is desirable and helps enhance the enjoyment of both the dish and the beer. Styles with higher acidity are often also sour so see listed styles above.

Sweetness

Beer and Brownies Sweet in either food or beer paired with an acidic counterpart increases the acidity. So avoid pairing sweet and acidic together—imagine toothpaste and orange juice. This is why so many more beers with natural sweetness work so well with dessert compared to so few wines.

The same affect 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. This helps marry the two—so pairing sweet and sweet is a good thing!

Fat

Acidic beverages do cut fat and that helps the palate sense more of the flavors from a fatty, rich or dense dish. See above 'hops' section for 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'. You know what heat is...those additions to food that make your eyes water and your nose run (think capsaicin from chili peppers or hot pepper flakes).

Here's a fun rhyme. Sweet calms heat!

Mouth fire Heat intensifies alcohol. That's a fact. And as the alcohol penetrates your tongue and lips it acts like a solvent which opens up your senses even more to heat! So be careful when pairing hot food with higher alcohol beverages as the pairing leaves your more vulnerable to the heat used to spice and 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 so be careful.

Moral of this two paragraph story...craft beer can go where wine cannot, because wine does not often go well with spicy food due to its higher alcohol by volume (usually 12% for most). Remember too don't pair higher alcohol craft beers with highly spiced (hot) foods. Instead try your malt forward styles against hot/spicy food and you'll be amazed at how well they soothe their intense effect.

Cheers and happy pairing!