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.
I recently heard a 
We all know how to drink beer, but how many of us take the time to really taste beer? How often do you notice and appreciate the color, clarity, and foamy head of the beer in your glass? When was the last time you really thought about the perfect food match for that bittersweet and citrusy Double IPA you pounded with friends at the bar? Can you recognize umami in your beer? After reading Randy Mosher’s newest book Tasting Beer, you may just start to think differently about the world’s oldest adult beverage.
that we all grew up with and bringing us up to date with the science by adding umami (think savory or meaty flavors) and fat to the list of perceivable flavors. He offers a thorough sensory vocabulary of beer, identifying the main ingredients of beer and describing the range of possible flavor and aroma contributions of each and how these individual contributions add up and present themselves in a finished beer. In the chapter titled Tasting, Judging, and Evaluation, Mosher writes about the importance of the tasting environment, lays out a simple beer tasting process (smell, look and sip, taste with your nose, analyze and score), as well as explaining the different processes and criteria one might use in different beer tasting contexts such as judging for competition or evaluating for quality control. The final chapters present a breezy survey of the major style categories with descriptions and examples to taste. His explanations of the historical development of some styles are particularly good and point out just how often economics drives the creation of new beer styles.
breweries per capita. The brewers responsible for this boom are turning out beers influenced by all the major brewing traditions including Belgium, England, and of course the United States. In the last year, More and more of these beers have shown up on store shelves right here in Minnesota. Maybe the state’s heritage is drawing them here, a kind of second-wave of Scandinavian immigration. Whatever it is, these beers were drawing my attention. I decided it was time to try some of them, so “Scandinavia” was the theme for the March meeting of my Beer Tasting Group.
taste and talk about new beers. Each month has a theme. Past themes have included “That beer on the shelf that you have always looked at but never actually bought”, 
Weasel is brewed at Nøgne-Ø and is itself a bit of an interesting story. This coffee infused imperial oatmeal stout uses Civet Cat coffee to achieve an intense yet smooth coffee flavor. For those who don’t know, Civet Cats eat coffee beans; supposedly only the best. The enzymes in their digestive systems work on the beans to give them a distinctive flavor (as one might imagine). The scat of these bean-munching felines is then collected. The beans, once freed from their fecal pod (and one hopes cleaned) become the rarest and most expensive coffee in the world. I can only say that this is the best coffee beer I have ever tasted. It is well worth picking up a bottle.
the beer list and probably half of the draft selection. Pretty much every Belgian style is represented from light Wibiers to Belgian Pale Ales, Abbey Styles, and the sourest of the sours. But Belgians aren’t all they have and there is something here to please every beer palate. I started with the Amber Ale from 
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.
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.