So which beverage pairs better with food, beer or wine? Dogfish head owner and brewer Sam Calagione and sommelier Marnie Old have been testing this question with beer vs. wine dinners across the country. In these dinners, a beer and a wine are paired with each course of the meal and diners are asked to vote for the beverage that they feel was the better pairing. According to their recent book He Said Beer She Said Wine, the answer is not quite as obvious as wine drinkers might believe or as clear cut as beer drinkers might desire.

He Said Beer She Said Wine is a decent primer on food pairing for either beer or wine. It begins with chapters giving the basics for each beverage, including ingredients, production process, and the flavor characteristics of major styles/varietals. Each writer then ties these things back to food pairing. For instance, Old writes about the source of and sensory perception of acidity in wine. She then goes on to explain how that acidity interacts with salt in foods to smooth out and enhance the flavors of each. Calagione describes the bittering effect and flavors of hops and explains why hoppy beer is a good match for rich fatty foods. Both Old and Calagione do a good job of outlining the basics of beer and wine tasting and providing some general guidelines for food pairing.

From the basics the book moves on to chapters dealing with different foods. There is a chapter for cheese, fruit, vegetables, shellfish, fish, poultry, meat, fruit deserts, and other deserts. Each chapter includes a section illuminating why the characteristics of wine or beer make each the perfect match for a given food group. Again, each writer does a reasonably good job of explaining the relative strengths and weaknesses of their chosen beverage as it relates to each type of food. Old sings the praises of white wine with fish, while being forced to admit that spicy foods are a tough match for most wines. Calagione trumpets the beauty of a variety of beers with meat, while conceding the difficulty of dealing with some vegetable treatments. Each chapter ends with a selection of dishes and a specific beer or wine pairing suggestion for each.

The final chapter is a guide for staging your own beer vs wine event at home. It includes common sense tips, recipes, and pairing suggestions.

The whole book is couched in the language of the beer vs wine challenge. While I love a good competition and can talk trash with the best of them, this was the part of the book that I found annoying. Each individual food section ends with a back-and-forth between the writers in which they supposedly made the arguments for their libation directly to one another. While this was sometimes witty, in most cases there was little of substance here. After a couple of chapters I was tempted to skip over these pages and move on to the meaty stuff. Despite this, He Said Beer She Said Wine is a good read for anyone interested in learning more about pairing beer with food.

So which beverage does pair better? Calagione and Old report that the results at their events have always been close. The winner usually edges out the loser by only one course and the overall tally is even.