here's to beer (part 2)

Beer. It's what's for dinner, and barbecues, and formal dinners and hot summer days.... Beer sommelier, educator, writer and super-cool beer chick Christina Perozzi is here to tell us all — chicks and non-chicks alike — about the finer points of our favorite fizzy lifting drink.

In this installment of our three-part interview, find out how to put together a beer-pairing dinner. Then stay tuned for a future post on how to turn your favorite beerphobes into beer fans -- and read about Christina's take on beer trends and summer favorites.

How is beer-pairing different from wine-pairing?
It's not really any different. I’m still pairing a beer based on the same principles that people use to pair wine with food. I find ways in which the beer parallels the food, ways that it's similar, or ways that the beer can enhance flavors in the food....

For instance, I did a pairing with a saison (a farmhouse Belgian ale) and a scallop dish. The scallop dish had sour capers, peppery arugula and lemon zest — and the saison had a tart sourness, peppery notes and hoppy citrus notes. So those flavors were all enhancing each other.

I also pair beer in what I call perpendicular ways, in which the beer will cut through the food as well. In the instance that I mentioned, the scallop dish was also very rich and buttery, and the perceived dryness from the hops in the saison cut right through that and really cleaned up the palate after every bite.

Beer pairing is a little different, though, because there are so many more overt flavors and ingredients in beer, that sometimes a beer will make a better pairing with a food than wine, especially for notoriously difficult wine pairings like asparagus, eggplant, artichokes, super spicy foods, chocolate.... I could name five different beer styles that would make great pairings for each of those foods.

What are some quick tips you can give someone hosting a beer-pairing dinner?

• I would say to have a different beer paired with each course; that’s the most fun.
• Try to not duplicate styles of beer, so that each beer is very different and interesting. Make sure you don’t forget dessert! There are lots of great fruit beers or beers that have chocolate, nutty and coffee notes.
• Serve the beer in wine glasses, not pint glasses — preferably big burgundy glasses, so guests can look and swirl and really get their noses down in it to get all the aromatics so you can really experience the beer!
• Make sure to not serve the beer too cold. It's another myth that beer should be ice-cold. That      deadens the flavor. If you are having a bad beer, go ahead and drink it ice-cold so you don’t have to taste it, but every style of beer has a suitable serving temperature…but you’re usually safe at around 50 degrees. Just take it out of the fridge for a couple of minutes before you serve it and you should be fine.
• Make sure not to over-serve. I usually do about 4-oz. pours of each of the beers for my pairing dinner. You want your guests to remember the experience!
• Oh, I would also say to serve the beers from least intense to the most intense. That way you don’t kill your palate with a super-strong beer right off the bat, with everything after that tasting      like water in comparison.

What kind of food pairs especially well with beer?
There are so many great pairings. Mussels with fries and the Belgian Trappist Ale Orval is one of the best pairings I’ve ever had. Cheesecake and a fruit lambic is awesome. A stinky blue cheese with a nice, malty barleywine is pretty damn good too!

Do you need to spend a lot of money and get very exotic beers for a beer-pairing dinner?
No. One of the things I love about beer is that you can be having some of the best beers in the world and you’re not spending $1,200 like you are for the top wines. And you don’t have to get super-exotic either.

Keep it local; that’s what I always say. There are craft brewers everywhere now, and their beer is awesome and rare and you can only get it in your part of the country for the most part. They are always experimenting with new flavors and beer styles because they are artists.

Does the shape of the beer glass matter as much as it does with wine and stemware?
Yes. In fact, most Belgian brewers design a glass to specifically enhance their beers. But you can get away with drinking out of a nice, thin, bulbous glass. Thin so that the beer can warm up a bit, and it's nicer to drink out of a bulbous glass so you can really get the aromatics.

Comments

Do you really find that women like fruit flavored beers? Those are the kind I like the least. Only in desperation will I drink apricot flavored beer. I couldn't even finish the lemon beer I tried which is odd because I like a squirt of lemon in my Dos Equis.