Perfect Pairings

March 7, 2007 – as published in the Beacon News and Naperville Sun

By Bill Garlough

This month, my wine column switches gears from wine to beer. With St. Patrick’s Day right around the corner, many of us become a wee bit Irish and celebrate the occasion with a pint or two.

Beer and wine share many similarities. Both were made and refined by monks. Also, both are influenced by the fermentation process. Wine can be broadly segregated by white and red; beer is divided between ales and lagers.

The type of yeast selected and the temperature of the brewing process determine if the brew will become an ale or a lager.

Ales are brewed with top fermenting yeast (yeast remains at the top of the barrel during fermentation) at approximately 70 degrees, resulting in a more fruity taste. Examples of ales include porters, stouts, wheat beers and pale ales. These are best served at 45 to 50 degrees.

Lagers are brewed at a colder temperature of 50 to 55 degrees with bottom fermenting yeast, which produces a more round, clean and crisp beverage. Examples of lagers include pilsners, bocks and Oktoberfest beers. These are best served at a cooler 35 to 45 degrees.

The Irish typically prefer beer served at a warmer temperature. Cold beer in a warm stomach releases more carbonation, creating an uncomfortable bloated feeling.

To evaluate a beer, it is best to smell the aroma while the head is present. A head that quickly disappears suggests a lower malt level and excessive carbonation. A quality beer has flavors of hops and barley-malt. Evaluate a beer like you would a wine – should swish the beer in your mouth to determine its balance, sweetness level, body and finish (aftertaste). Good beer begins with an aromatic hoppiness, offers flavor (like malty sweetness) and has a long aftertaste.

Food pairings

Given its international popularity, beer plays a significant role in meals, social outings and celebrations around the world. Around St. Patrick’s Day, every tavern becomes Irish. They offer beers with Irish inspired dishes, including the traditional corned beef and cabbage. With this fare, a good match is an Irish ale such as Bass Pale Ale, Goose Island Red Ale, Caffrey’s Irish Ale or Sierra Nevada Pale Ale. Though the Irish may protest, Germany is synonymous with beer, with approximately 1,200 breweries and a per capita consumption of 39 gallons. Germany’s annual three-week Oktoberfest celebration in Munich centers on beer. In our area, Oktoberfest celebrations offer a good opportunity to experience quality beers from local microbreweries.

Other cultures also feature beer with their everyday cuisine. As an example, at Kiku’s Japanese Steakhouse in Naperville, the proprietor Steve Shorin pairs full-bodied Sapporo Beer with<!–more–> teriyaki-glazed chicken skewers (Yaki Tori) and also recommends Kobe beef barbecue – a wonderful combination!

As with wine, beer can be paired with food. Ales are best with red meat and lagers work well with white meat. A beer’s hoppiness level is similar to wine’s acidity level. A higher level (within balance) tends to be more food friendly. Local microbreweries and imports tend to have more hops in their product than America’s national brands.

More intense hoppy flavor profiles range from Guinness’ rich creamy texture with a roasted flavor (and surprisingly has fewer calories per ounce than skim milk) to Bass Ale’s smooth notes with a bitter aftertaste to Sierra Nevada’s malty profile to Harp’s strong but not overpowering beer flavor (ideal summer beer as it is best served chilled).

Most popular pubs offer 10 to 15 draft beers to choose from, so exploring new flavors is readily available. Next time, try matching a recommended pairing of an ale or lager with your meal, to see how they complement each other.

As Quigley’s Irish Pub reminds us, a great Irish pub offers fun, good conversation, good music and food and great people. Sounds like a great recipe for a perfect pairing. Happy St. Pat’s Day!

Beer Basics

Match Game

Matching a beer type with the various dishes or courses, the following generalizations apply:

Ales:  Salads, corned beef, beef, lamb and dessert

Lagers:  Pizza, fish and German sausages

Bill’s Picks

Two Brother’s:  Domaine DuPage Ale

Walter Payton’s:  Payton Pilsner

Guinness:  Extra Stout

Harp:  Lager

Caffrey’s:  Irish Ale

Bass:  Pale Ale

Sierra Nevada: Pale Ale

For more from Bill Garlough’s Perfect Pairings visit My Chef.

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Beer is known to be a drink that is supposed to quench your thirst. To get people to buy different varieties of beer there are various beer commercials that tempt us to buy these beers. These commercials that you will see everywhere are found in different types of media. For instance you will see beer commercials on TV, on bill boards and even at sports matches.

These beer commercials are kept at a light hearted medium as they show people all of the best things which can happen if you drink a particular type of beer. There are other beer commercials where you will see different types of animals being used to promote beer. Now these animals are not seen drinking any beer. Instead they promote the beer by showing the lifestyle which can accompany the drinking of beer.

You can see the humorous side of these beer commercials as they merely try to show you that drinking beer is a friendly activity. You may have seen many of these various beer commercials to remember the more memorable ones. For instance you may remember the beer company who had a bull dog as they mascot for the beer commercials.

In this series of commercials Spud the Bulldog was seen living the good life as he was surrounded by people who loved coming to the parties where he was as there was great food, fantastic company and free flowing beer. Of course after a few years time Spud was retired. The next set of animals to grace our lives with beer commercials was a trio of frogs or toads.

For these fun commercials you see a pond scene at night. There are three frogs seated on rocks and a lily leaf. You suddenly hear one of the frogs make a sudden noise. This frog says the word Bud. The next frog then pipes up with another word. This time the word is wise. And finally the final frog says the final sounds, which are “er”. At first each of these sounds is somewhat far apart.

As the words come closer you get to hear the words these frogs are croaking. The frogs are letting us know about the fact that even frogs are impressed by the Budweiser beer. As you see there are many fun things which can be found in beer commercials. And despite the fact that these beer commercials are in some cases more than ten years old, you will still see the influence which lingers with beer commercials.

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In order to match foods and beers successfully, it is necessary to figure out what the strengths are of both the food and the beer that might lend themselves to one another. Some of the things to consider are how light dishes and light beers work together. Not light as lightweight or as in having less substance, but light as in delicately flavored. For instance, perhaps a pale ale might work with a food such as a salad.

Foods with strong flavors such as dishes with onions or sausage should be paired with stronger tasting beers and ales. You would need to consider such characteristics or qualities as sweetness and bitterness, highly carbonated or lightly carbonated, the character of  the malt, and the richness of the flavors when successfully matching beers and foods. A good example is how a German lager with rich flavor might go well with a dinner of roast pork.

Another way to match beers and foods is to take a look at the country in which the beer is brewed, and at the kinds of foods that are served with it there. At first, don’t give up if your beer and food matches are not exactly right on with one another. Light foods can be matched with light ales in the summer and heavier foods with darker ales in the winter.

Here are some examples that might help to match foods and beers. A light, refreshing beer or wheat beer might be a good choice to go with a salad. Red or amber ales work well with certain types of fish, such as smoked salmon. Lagers and pilsners can be good with roasted chicken or other poultry dishes, while grilled or roast beef might call for a heartier beer, something along the lines of a stout.

Wine and cheese are no longer the only complementary appetizers. Beers have all of the different flavors necessary to work well with any cheese combination. Here, you might try a hard cheddar cheese with a stout or hardy beer. Some soft cheeses go well with beers that have slightly fruity flavors, such as those of raspberries or strawberries.

There are also beers to go with just about any kind of dessert. Older ales are often good with nutty-tasting sweet breads. If you have a very sweet dessert, such as cheesecake, you might try to find something with a spicy taste. You can’t beat a dark beer for the way it tastes with chocolate, and often a fruit pie might do well with a fruity beer or ale.

As more and more people experiment with the endless possibilities of specialty microbrews, it will be easier and easier to figure out which food and beer pairings work the best. Keep experimenting with different tastes. You are sure to find pleasing combinations and you will have a lot of fun in the process.

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Category Lager Pilsner
Recipe Type Extract

Fermentables
4 lbs Mountmellick hopped light malt extract
3 oz crystal malt

Hops
.25 oz Saaz hops (boil)
.5 oz Saaz hops (finish)

Other
2 tsp gypsum

Yeast Wyeast #2007
Procedure This recipe makes 5-1/2 gallons. Make 2-quart starter for yeast. Steep crystal malt at 170 degrees for 20 minutes in brew water. Remove grains. Boil extract and boiling hops for 75 minutes. Add finishing hops in last 10 minutes. Conduct primary fermentation at 47-49 degrees for 3 weeks. Lager for 4 weeks at 30 degrees

Pilsner Urquell

Category Lager Pilsner
Recipe Type Extract
The yeast I used produced a very clean, clear beer and I’d recommend it highly. It you haven’t gotten into liquid yeast cultures yet, do it for this batch. The difference is tremendous. Also I feel the key to success here are:
The lightest extract you can find.
Fresh hops or pellets packed in Nitrogen (only Saaz will do).
Liquid yeast fermented at a steady low temp.

Fermentables
4 lbs Alexander’s Pale malt extract syrup
2-1/3 lbs light dry malt extract

Hops
15 AAU’s Saaz hops

Yeast Wyeast 2007 Bohemian Pilsner yeast
Procedure Bring extracts and 2 gallons of water to boil. Add 5 AAU’s of Saaz hops at beginning of boil. Add 5 AAU’s again at 30 minutes and at 10 minutes. Pitch yeast when cool.

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Geographically, Slovakia is an obvious location for great lager beers. They have access to the best hops, grains and softest water in the world. This and a long brewing tradition is what makes Golden Pheasant® a very special product. Golden Pheasant® is true to the style for the region, a robust, full-flavored beer. It exhibits a great balance between nutty malt flavors, aromatics and delicious noble hop varieties. The finish is clean and refreshing, making Golden Pheasant® a pleasure to drink. Most recently,Golden Pheasant® won the bronze medal in the “Lager” category at the 10th Annual Great International Beer Festival in Providence, Rhode Island.Not a bad award considering how faithful a group they are to their own “micro-brews”.Golden Pheasant® is rated as “Highly Recommended” by the Beverage Testing Institute and was awarded a Silver Medal in the World Beer Championships.

Krušovice brews highly regarded beers with long traditions. Finns have taken to these brews. The Royal Brewery of Krušovice has made beer in a small Bohemian village close to Prague for over 400 years. Today, Krušovice beers are sales leaders in the Czech Republic and popular export beers.

One of the most popular beers in the world and easily recognizable. When presented properly in it chalice it really makes you feel like you are drinking something special. Stella Artois is a dry beer with a little bit of bitterness that makes it refreshing.

Carlsberg dates back to 1847 when J.C. Jacobsen brewed a beer and named it after his son Carl. Since then the Copenhagen based brewer has become the 5th largest brewer in the world employing over 30,000 people world wine. The brewery has plants all around the world inclding Shanghai, Israel amongst others and owns several other quality brands including Tuborg and Tetley one of England’s more popular brands. Known for it’s huge soccer sponsorships and its catchy ‘Probably the best beer in the world’ the brewer is one of Europe’s best.

Staropramen means “old spring” in Czech and water, more specifically the soft water of the area is an essential ingredient. The quality of Czech brewed lager is still arguably the best in the world. Beer drinking in the Czech Republic is a national pastime and people of all ages enjoy a refreshing drink at least once a day. They have a long and proud tradition of brewing and hold the record for the most beers consumed per capita. Czech brewers were amongst the first to use hops. Czech hops are world renowned, and the production of hops in Bohemia (a region in the Czech Rep.) was recorded as far back as 859 AD. These hops from Zatec, or in German, Saaz, are used to flavor many beers like Stella Artois. These hops create a rich fullness and crisp clean aroma. Czech brewers actually pioneered the golden lager recipe which has become the most popular style in the world.

Topvar is produced in Topvar Brewery (Pivovary Topvar, a.s.), founded in 1957 and situated in Topolčany Slovakia. Since 2006 (together with Šariš Brewery), it is a member of global brewing giant SABMiller. The beer is characterized by further fermentation with its own characteristic ester aroma. It has pleasantly bitter, delicate malt and hop aroma. The color of the beer is lighter. It is popular for both male and female lovers of beer.

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