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This Bud's for you, what about your food?

By TOM VALEO
Published June 29, 2005

	[Times photo: Bill Serne]
	Stouts and ales, porters and bitters: There’s a world of beers beyond the usual suspects to pair with food.

When in the course of human events (such as the Fourth of July), it becomes necessary for one people to fire up the grill and throw on burgers and brats, and boil corn on the cob, and pull potato salad out of the fridge, along with cole slaw, pickles, ketchup and mustard, and maybe open corn chips and salsa, we hold this truth to be self-evident: Nothing goes better with such a spread than an ice-cold beer.

But why limit yourself to the same old brew? Declare your independence and engage in a heightened pursuit of happiness by pairing picnic fare with some of the more exotic and flavorful beers now widely available. It can be done, says Garrett Oliver, brewmaster of the Brooklyn Brewery and author of The Brewmaster's Table: Discovering the Pleasures of Real Beer With Real Food (Ecco, 2005; $16.95).

"If, to you, "beer' means the yellow fizzy stuff sitting in cans on supermarket shelves, I want you to clear your mind of the fact that those products even exist," he writes in the chapter "Principles of Matching Beer With Food."

"This is what real beer can do: It can make every single decent meal you have light up your senses and make you actually want to pay attention to what's happening on your palate. Paying that little bit of attention, both to your food and to our beer, is the difference between having an okay culinary life and having one filled with boundless riches of flavor."

But how does one go about pairing food with beer?

"The most important thing we're looking for is balance," Oliver writes. "We want the beer and food to engage in a lively dance, not a football tackle. In order to achieve the balance we seek, we need to think about the sensory impact of both the beer and its prospective food partner."

To help get this idea across, Oliver includes a "reference chart" listing specific foods and the beers that love them.

Here are some examples that might turn up in your life this weekend:

BURGERS: American brown ale, pale ale and Indian pale ale, schwarzbier, altbier and American amber lager.

FRIED CHICKEN: American amber lager, American brown ale and altbier.

CORN ON THE COB: Helles, Kolsch, Dortmunder and weissbier.

BAKED HAM: Irish stout, pilsner, Dortmunder, hellesbock, Oktoberfest marzen, tripel, Belgian strong golden ale and English brown ale.

NACHOS: American pale ale and Indian pale ale, American amber lager, Oktoberfest marzen and Irish stout.

SAUSAGES: Almost any beer, but particularly Belgian pale ale, bitter, Oktoberfest marzen, dunkel, altbier, biere de garde and saison. SHRIMP: Pilsner, weissbier, witbier, helles, saison, Belgian strong golden ale, American pale ale and Irish stout. STEAK: American amber lager, American brown ale, altbier, porter and dubbel.

STEAK TARTARE: Tripel, strong dark Trappist or abbey ale.

Don't forget that all-American dessert, APPLE PIE: Imperial stout, strong Baltic porter, cream stout.

And if you serve it with ICE CREAM: Imperial stout, American stout, cream stout, strong Baltic porter and sweet fruit beers.

- Tom Valeo is a freelance writer based in St. Petersburg.

[Last modified June 28, 2005, 09:11:04]