I facilitated a beer dinner last night at the Dining Studio in Minneapolis. The main course was a ribeye of prime beef with a bleu cheese potato gratin. I paired this course with Traquair Jacobite strong scotch ale flavored with coriander. As I made my way around the room there was one gentleman who was not overly fond of this beer. He had pushed his glass away and gone back to the leftovers of the earlier two beers. When I asked him what it was he didn’t like about it, he said it tasted too much of chocolate. I guess he wasn’t a fan of chocolate, at least not in his beer. He swore to me though that he would try it with the ribeye.

When I came back to his table a few minutes later, he had pulled the glass back toward himself and it was now half empty. This time he said that he loved the beer. While he didn’t like it on its own, the food pairing had mellowed the chocolate flavors and enhanced the dark fruit flavors, making the beer not just palatable to him, but pleasurable.

Flavors played off of each other really do affect one another. It’s a nice testament to the power of pairing the right beer with the right food.